Have you checked your refund status this tax season by using the “Where’s My Refund?” tool? If so, you’re one of many taxpayers who have used the tool a combined 231 million times this year, an increase of nearly 35% over last year at this time.
The “Where’s my Refund?” tool is available at IRS.gov or by using the IRS2Go phone app, free for from the Google Play Store, the Apple App Store and the Amazon store. It’s available in both English and Spanish.
You can check the status of your tax refund within 24 hours after the IRS has acknowledged receipt of your e-filed tax return or 4 weeks after you mail a paper tax return. There’s no advantage to checking several times throughout the day: the IRS only updates the site once per day, usually overnight.
To check the status of your refund, you’ll need your Social Security number, filing status and exact refund amount. If you don’t have internet access (which makes me wonder how you’re reading this), you can access the service by calling 1.800.829.1954, 24 hours a day; note that this is an automated service and a real person will not answer the phone so don’t rely on this number for other tax issues.
The “Where’s My Refund?” tool will show the status of your refund in three stages:
- Return Received. No magic, just what it sounds like.
- Refund Approved. Once your refund is approved, the IRS will send your refund to your bank if you elected direct deposit or in the mail if you requested a paper check. This status should indicate when your refund is scheduled to be sent to your bank and, if you elected direct deposit, when the refund will be credited to your account.
- Refund Sent. Tada! Your refund is on its way! It’s not instantaneous: plan on five days from the date IRS sent the refund to your bank to check with your bank about the status (bank policies on the availability of deposit funds may vary). If you requested a paper check, “the check’s in the mail” but it could take several weeks for your check to arrive.
However, if you’ve amended your return, you can’t use the “Where’s My Refund?” tool. You must use the cleverly named “Where’s My Amended Return?” tool or call 1.866.464.2050 three weeks after you have filed your amended return (remember, amended returns take much longer to process).
Feel the need to call and chat with the IRS instead? Don’t. There’s no advantage to calling to ask about your tax refund. Even if you can get an IRS representative on the phone (and that’s a big if), the IRS can only research the status of your refund in certain situations. Specifically, you can get phone assistance related to your refund if it has been 21 days or more since you e-filed your return or more than six weeks since you mailed your paper return. You can also get personal assistance if the “Where’s My Refund?” app directs you to contact IRS.
Similarly, ordering a tax transcript won’t help you figure the status of your refund. The codes that you’ll see on your tax transcripts won’t really offer any insight into when a refund will be issued.
If it’s been longer than 21 days since the IRS received your e-filed return and you still don’t have your refund, it’s likely that there’s a problem. There might be an error on your return, it may be incomplete or require further review, or you may have been impacted by identity theft or tax fraud. If the IRS needs more info, they will contact you by mail.
If you haven’t received your refund and none of the above applies to you, it’s possible that the check is in the mail. The IRS won’t issue a refund by direct deposit into just any account: it can only be deposited into an account in your own name, your spouse’s name or both of your names if married with a joint account. If there’s an issue with the account, the IRS will send a paper check.
Remember, too, that as of 2014, the IRS has changed the rules related to refunds and direct deposits. Now, no more than three electronic refunds can be directly deposited into a single financial or bank account or applied to a pre-paid debit card. Taxpayers who exceed the limit will instead receive a paper refund.
[So far this season, the IRS says that it’s issuing 90% of taxpayer refunds in less than 21 days. As of the week ending March 28, 2016, 65,441,000 refunds have been issued, a slight decline of 1.0% over the same time period last year. The total amount of refunds issued so far is $189.896 billion, also down slightly from last year. The average refund, however, is up from last year, at a healthy $2,902.
