2019 IRS Tax Refund Schedule

If anyone tells you that they have the 2019 tax filing season all figured, they’re lying. By all accounts, the upcoming tax season is going to be tricky. Despite a shoestring staff due to the shutdown, new tax forms and new tax rules, the 2019 tax season is still set to open on January 28, 2019. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) claims that the season will operate as close to normal as possible—including issuing tax refunds.

So when are those tax refunds coming? Assuming no delays, what follows are my best guesses for expected returns based on filing dates and information from the IRS:

No matter when you filed your tax return, if you claimed the EITC or the ACTC, don’t forget to take into consideration the required hold. Keep reading for more.

I can’t stress enough that these are simply educated guesses. I like math and charts as much as the next girl, but many factors could affect your tax refund.

My numbers are based on an expected IRS receipt date beginning on the open of tax season, January 28, 2019, through the close of tax season on April 15, 2019. To keep the chart manageable, I’ve assumed the IRS received your e-filed tax return on the first business day of the week; that’s usually a Monday, but if there’s a holiday (like President’s Day), I’ve skipped ahead until Tuesday. If you file on a Tuesday, the chart assumes that your refund will be processed the following Monday. That’s true even though the IRS can receive and process tax returns on each business day.

The same logic holds true for issuing tax refunds. For purposes of the chart, I’m assuming that the IRS will issue your direct deposit within two weeks of receipt of your return and issue paper checks the following Friday. In reality, the IRS issues tax refunds on every business day, so the date could move forward or backward depending on the day your return was received.

The IRS says that most refunds are issued within 21 days. Statistically, the IRS has pegged the number at 90%. Anecdotally, taxpayers with fairly straightforward returns and no flags or other issues receive their tax refunds in an average of 10-14 days. That means that assuming a window within 2-3 weeks of receipt—not from the date of filing or mailing—from the following Monday is a reasonable assumption.

Other sites may have different numbers, but remember they’re just guessing, too, since the IRS no longer makes their tax refund processing chart public. Do not rely on any tax refund chart—mine included—for date-specific planning like a large purchase or a paying back a loan. Relying on a date certain, especially in uncertain times, is a recipe for disaster.

Finally, don’t get ahead of yourself if you claim the earned-income tax credit (EITC) and the additional child tax credit (ACTC). By law, the IRS must wait until mid-February to begin issuing refunds to taxpayers who claim the EITC or the ACTC. In addition to normal processing times for banks, factoring in weekends and the President’s Day holiday, the earliest EITC and ACTC-related refunds are expected to be available on February 27, 2019; that’s assuming direct deposit and no other issues. If you’re looking for more information, the “Where’s My Refund?” tool will be updated with projected deposit dates for affected filers after February 23, 2019.

If you want to get your tax refund as fast as possible, the IRS recommends that you e-file your tax return and use direct deposit. If you file by paper, it will take longer. The IRS notes that processing times can take up to four weeks in a “normal” tax season, and this tax season promises to be far from normal. 

Even if you request direct deposit, you may still receive a paper check. Since 2014, the IRS has limited the number of refunds that can be deposited into a single account or applied to a prepaid debit card to three. Taxpayers who exceed the limit will instead receive a paper check. Additionally, the IRS won’t issue a refund by direct deposit into just any account: It can only be deposited into an account in your 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.

If you’re looking for more information about the timing of your tax refund, don’t reach out to your tax professional. Instead, the IRS encourages you to use the “Where’s My Refund?” tool. Have your Social security number or ITIN, filing status and exact refund amount handy. Refund updates should appear 24 hours after e-filing or four weeks after you mailed your paper return. The IRS updates the site once per day, usually overnight, so there’s no need to check more than once during the day.

If you’re looking for tax information on the go, you can check your refund status with IRS2Go, the official mobile app of the IRS. The app includes a tax refund status tracker.

If, after 21 days following the day you e-filed your return, or six weeks since you filed your paper return, you still haven’t received your refund and you did not claim the EITC or ACTC, there may be a problem. There might be an error on your return, it may be incomplete or require review, or you may have been impacted by identity theft. If the IRS needs more info, they will contact you by mail. Otherwise, you can try calling the IRS, but remember that phone lines may be affected by the shutdown. The days leading up to President’s Day weekend (February 16-18, 2019) are the busiest for IRS, so expect longer than average wait times even if the government is back in business.

Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/2019/01/21/2019-tax-refund-chart-can-help-you-guess-when-youll-receive-your-money/#1e5337a54ba2

Kelly Phillips Erb Senior Contributor


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Food Stamps cut & No Tax Returns during Government Shutdown

Food stamps for 38 million low-income Americans would face severe reductions and more than $140 billion in tax refunds are at risk of being frozen or delayed if the government shutdown stretches into February, widespread disruptions that threaten to hurt the economy.

The Trump administration, which had not anticipated a long-term shutdown, recognized only this week the breadth of the potential impact, several senior administration officials said. The officials said they were focused now on understanding the scope of the consequences and determining whether there is anything they can do to intervene.

Thousands of federal programs are affected by the shutdown, but few intersect with the public as much as the tax system and the Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the current version of food stamps.

The partial shutdown has cut off new funding to the Treasury Department and the USDA, leaving them largely unstaffed and crippling both departments’ ability to fulfill core functions.

The potential cuts to food stamps and suspension of tax refunds illustrate the compounding consequences of leaving large parts of the federal govern­ment unfunded indefinitely — a ­scenario that became more likely Friday when President Trump said he would leave the government shut down for months or even years unless Democrats gave him money to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.

The SNAP program is rare among federal initiatives because it requires annual funding from Congress, even though its existence is automatically renewed.

Congress has not allocated funding for SNAP beyond January, and the program’s emergency reserves would not cover even two-thirds of February’s payments, according to past disbursements. Last September, the most recent month for which data is available, SNAP disbursed $4.7 billion in benefits to recipients across every U.S. state.

Lawmakers last year appropriated $3 billion into a “contingency” fund for SNAP. USDA officials would not comment on the status of the $3 billion, but if all of that money is still available, it would cover just 64 percent of February’s obligations.

Agency officials have not said how they would address the shortfall, including whether they would prioritize who receives food aid or cut benefits for everyone across the board.

If the shutdown continues through March, there would be no remaining money for benefits.

We are currently looking at options for SNAP,” said Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Agriculture Department. “The best course of action would be for Congress to pass a legitimate appropriations bill to the president to end the lapse in funding.”

During the shutdown, the USDA office that administers SNAP has sent home 95 percent of its employees without pay, according to a flowchart on the department’s website.

“People in this country will go hungry,” said Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.). “It’s simple. They go hungry. . . . These are working people. We’re not talking about people who are dogging it.”

The disruption would hurt not only the families that receive the assistance but also grocers and other retailers where the money is spent.

Treasury Department officials, meanwhile, are trying to determine what to do with the flood of requests for tax refunds that will come in next month.

The Internal Revenue Service has sent home close to 90 percent of its staff without pay ahead of an extremely busy time for the tax agency.

From late January through March 2 of 2018, the IRS paid out $147.6 billion in tax refunds to 48.5 million households. That money could be frozen within the IRS if the refunds are stalled.

Early last year, as part of its contingency planning for possible government shutdowns, the IRS said it would not issue any tax refunds during a shutdown. Treasury and IRS officials have not said they will completely suspend all tax refunds next month, but a senior administration official said such disbursements would be severely affected and likely slowed if they are paid.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.) sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin on Friday asking him to detail the impact of job cuts at the IRS and how the tax filing season will be handled during the shutdown.

“Please confirm whether the IRS will issue federal tax refunds at any time during government shutdown,” the letter said. “If so, please provide the anticipated date when the IRS will be issuing refunds.”

This could have an immediate impact on the economy, as well as on the finances of millions of Americans who frequently spend their tax refunds soon after receiving them.

“The IRS will finalize and release its filing season lapse plan in the coming days,” said a Treasury Department official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the internal planning.

Under normal schedules, tax returns for income earned in 2018 would be due April 15. People who anticipate receiving a tax refund — meaning they overpaid their taxes last year — tend to file their taxes as early as possible to recoup the funds quickly.

“It would be a huge political and economic hit for people who are expecting their $2,500 or $3,000 refund to not be able to get that money,” said Mark Mazur, a former top IRS official who served at Treasury during the Obama administration.

Trump has said he is willing to keep agencies shut down as long as necessary to force Democrats to appropriate several billion dollars for the construction of walls along the Mexico border. But some Republicans have said they are uncomfortable with this approach, and several this week sided with Democrats in their effort to reopen agencies immediately.

The scale of the consequences also reflects a deep disconnect between Trump, who has largely cheered on a prolonged shutdown, and the officials running federal agencies, who are trying to minimize the fallout.

“If we have to stay out for a very long period of time, we’re going to do that,” Trump said Friday.

White House officials have not fully briefed lawmakers on the expanding consequences of the government shutdown, leading to confusion about what happens as each week goes by.

Neal said that the IRS is considering bringing staffers back to work in the coming weeks to help deal with tax filings but that it’s unclear how the agency will proceed. These employees would have to work without pay unless Congress passed an emergency funding bill. He said delays in tax refunds would lead to “more anger, for something that can be solved.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a top House conservative who had cheered Trump’s approach in the political confrontation, said he was unaware that there would be any impact on SNAP benefits.

He said he was convinced this money was automatically appropriated by Congress: “Food stamps go on regardless,” he said.

This is not the case, however, according to several senior administration officials.

Meadows said he was “not downplaying the potential consequences of a shutdown,” but said the whole situation could be easily resolved if Democrats would appropriate several billion dollars for the border wall.

The government shutdown began Dec. 22 after Trump blocked a bipartisan deal to fund numerous federal agencies through Feb. 8 because he wants more than $5 billion to construct 200 miles of wall along the border.

During his campaign and earlier in his presidency, Trump said the wall would be paid for by Mexico. That has not happened.

The shutdown began with an acute impact, cutting off funding to pay 800,000 federal employees, closing national parks and museums, and limiting federal services. The workers are expected to begin feeling the consequences of the shutdown more sharply next week: They will miss their first paychecks on Jan. 11 if a resolution isn’t reached.

“A month into this, we’re going to see people start to get evicted and their cars start to be repossessed,” said David Borer, general counsel for the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 750,000 federal employees.

And a much broader part of the federal bureaucracy is expected to begin grinding to a halt in February, absent a resolution.

Nonprofit groups have been able to patch together money to keep certain parts of the government open for several weeks, but it’s unclear how much longer they can hold on. And none has sought to replicate the level of funding that would be lost if SNAP runs out of money or tax refunds are stalled.

“That’s scary, really scary,” said Lyman Hafen, executive director at Utah’s Zion National Park Forever Project, a nonprofit partner of one of the country’s most scenic parks. “It’s not a good situation without that support. We’re just taking it a day at a time, a week at a time.”

The cumulative impact of these changes could have a major impact on the economy.

Joseph Brusuelas, chief economist at RMS U.S., an accounting and consulting firm, said a prolonged shutdown would shave an entire percentage point off the U.S.’s economic growth, in part because of an “uncertainty tax” that would freeze spending by households and businesses.

“If one doesn’t know what’s going to happen with respect to their own income . . . there will be a pull back on the purchase of big-ticket items,” he said. “Large firms will pull back on outlays on software, equipment and capital.”

SOURCE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/millions-face-delayed-tax-refunds-cuts-to-food-aid-as-white-house-scrambles-to-deal-with-shutdown/2019/01/04/b5b58616-0fa3-11e9-8938-5898adc28fa2_story.html?utm_term=.bb655e222892

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