Blog

"When will I receive my stimulus payment?' "What about my tax refund?"

My staff and I are receiving a lot of these questions lately, and there are no easy answers. The long & short of it is (A) we don’t have any information that isn’t already available to you individually, and (B) we cannot make the IRS to expedite either of these.

The problem is that the IRS is seriously backlogged right now. Many of their employees are still working remotely on account of the coronavirus. And that agency’s systems were never designed to send out stimulus payments to most Americans, so they’re doing the best they can under the circumstances.

TAX REFUNDS:

If you have already filed your 2020 taxes ELECTRONICALLY and are owed a refund, the IRS is working through those as fast as they can. While the IRS website says it could take up to 21 business days to process your return, the reality is it’s taking significantly longer.

If for whatever reason you snail-mailed a PAPER RETURN, you’re in for an even longer wait. Paper returns are taking significantly longer for the IRS to process right now, and I don’t expect this to ease up anytime soon.

You can check the status of your federal income tax refund through the link below:

https://www.irs.gov/refunds

If you have checked your status online and there’s no update after 90 days of filing, please contact my office at (803) 327-1114 and we’ll look into it for you.

STIMULUS PAYMENTS:

If you have not yet received your FIRST or SECOND stimulus payment, the only way to receive that at this point is to claim a “Recovery Rebate Credit” on your 2020 federal income taxes. Doing so will either add that missing stimulus payment to your refund (if you overpaid Uncle Sam last year) or decrease the amount due (if you underpaid).

If you have not yet received your THIRD stimulus payment, you’ll need to sit tight for a while longer. The IRS is processing those as rapidly as they can, and it will take several more weeks before all the payments have been dispersed. There is no way to expedite this process.

You can check the status of your THIRD stimulus payment through the link below. However, we have seen countless examples where the IRS says a payment has been process or mailed, but it doesn’t show up for several weeks down the road.

https://www.irs.gov/coronavirus/get-my-payment