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Checking The Status of Your Tax Refund

Tax season can make you manic-depressive. Nothing is more depressing than preparing your taxes. Nothing is more manic than planning how to spend your tax refund. Ah, but when is it going to show up is the biggest question most have.

A quick word about tax refunds. While getting one may seem the greatest of things, it actually should cause you to take some time and analyze how you are paying taxes. Simply put, a tax refund means you are doing something wrong, particularly if it is large.

Imagine overpaying your car payments by $500 dollars a year and then getting a refund at the end of the year. Think that is smart? Well, it is exactly what you are doing when you overpay your taxes. If this sounds smart, I would like to borrow some money from you.

Regardless, you want to know about your tax refund this year. No problem there. The IRS has made it a relatively simple task to figure out the status of your tax refund. Yes, shocking, but true. The IRS is actually being helpful. The end of the world must be near.

To find out the status of your tax refund, the easiest method is to visit the IRS site. Just do a search for it. Once there, you want to click on the link that says where’s my refund? It is on the home page and prominently displayed.

Now, you need to get out your tax return. Yes, the one you just filed and should have made a copy of. You need it because the IRS form will ask for the amount of the refund you are claiming, the filing status you claimed and your social security number.

Fill out the form and the program should kick out a status report for your refund. It will tell you a proposed date of issuance, if it had a problem delivering the refund or if there is a problem with your tax return. Pray this last one does not come up.

If the status report shows there is a problem with your tax return, don’t panic. It can be something simple such as the computer is having problems reading it, some information is missing and so on. It does not necessarily mean you are going to be audited.

What if you are one of those people that had their return tagged for an audit? This may not be as bad as you think. The IRS is under budgeted and understaffed. Most of the time they just send a letter with a proposed change. Agree to the change and the audit is over.

A tax refund is glorious thing in the view of most people. There is nothing wrong with that view so long as you realize the feds are getting a free loan from you each year. Giving politicians free loans seems dubious to me, but to each their own.