She's reached out to lawmakers and spent four hours and about $60 in overseas telephone charges to try to get through to the IRS, but hasn't been able to find out where her 2019 tax return is, or when it might be processed. The stimulus checks would allow her and her husband to fix up their home in London and list it for sale, achieving a dream of moving to Galway, Ireland. "It is money I could well do with," Mahoney said, noting that she was laid off from her job as a paralegal before COVID-19 hit. Although Mahoney said she wasn't due a refund, she worries the issue is holding up her second and third stimulus checks - $600 and $1,400, respectively - which she has yet to receive. She's still waiting for her tax return to be processed. One of those taxpayers is Eileen Mahoney, 63, an American who lives in London and who mailed her paper tax forms last year. As of April 23, it had a backlog of 1.3 million individual returns filed before 2021 to finish processing, an IRS spokesman told CBS MoneyWatch in an emailed statement. The IRS said the agency is now opening mail within "normal timeframes," and noted that it's making progress on processing tax returns that were filed last year. The number of operations staff has fallen by almost a third since 2010, while overall funding has declined by more than 20%, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The IRS also must cope with the unprecedented health crisis with significantly fewer employees and less funding compared with a decade ago. As of March, the agency still had a backlog of 2.4 million paper returns from the 2019 tax year to process. Paper tax returns filed for the 2019 tax year were stored in trailers until IRS employees could get to them. Some taxpayers are still in the dark due to tax returns filed last year, when the IRS shut down its offices as the pandemic took hold.
"I depend on that money." In limbo for a year She said her taxes are fairly simple, but she wondered if something about the stimulus checks have tied up her return.įor now she remains in limbo, with Osborne telling CBS MoneyWatch she's been unable to reach anyone at the IRS. Osborne, a single mother who works as a project administrator in Tennessee, said her refund should amount to more than $4,400, which will cover about four months of rent. "I check 'Where's My Refund?,' and it says it's still being processed - I called the IRS after 21 days, and you can't get through to anyone." She filed her 2020 tax return on February 27. "My tax person said he was shocked if I wouldn't see my refund in 10 days, and it's been over two months," said Hillary Osborne, 41. With more than 40 million taxpayers yet to file, it's likely a portion of those returns will end up flagged for review - leaving those taxpayers with an unknown wait for their refunds, rather than the usual three-week turnaround. Rising CEO pay amplifies calls to tax the ric. All that can add time to processing a tax return, which, in turn, means delays for taxpayers in getting their refunds.Ībout 1 in 3 people who have claimed the Recovery Rebate Credit have had their returns flagged for review by an employee, according to a May 6 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. In such instances, the IRS flags the return for review - that requires an employee to check the return against the agency's record of stimulus payments. Some people are incorrectly filling out that line, typically by claiming the incorrect amount on the form.
One of those relates to the "Recovery Rebate Credit," the line on Form 1040 that allows people to adjust their stimulus payments if they didn't receive all the funds to which they were entitled. Some of those newly filed tax returns are getting flagged by the IRS because of issues related to recent tax changes and federal stimulus checks, Collins said. But much of the backlog also consists of 2020 tax returns, which are still flowing into the IRS. Some of those returns are paper tax filings from 2019, which the IRS got behind in processing due to the coronavirus pandemic last year.
Nj tax refund status down manual#
Collins had flagged the issue in an April 22 blog post, when the number of tax returns held up for manual processing had reached about 29 million.