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The tax season for processing 2016 federal income tax returns begins Monday, January 23, 2017. The tax day deadline will be April 18th this season, to adapt to the Easter holiday weekend.
The IRS says it would start accepting electronic tax returns on January 23rd and it anticipates more than 153 million individual tax returns to be filed. This, as Congress is expected to continue tight budget constraints on the agency under a new administration. Taxpayer advocates warn taxpayers to expect delays in processing, more computer-driven automatic correspondence audits (letters that are sent by computers to taxpayers when a tax return issue raises a flag without a preliminary review by human eyes), and extremely long wait times should a taxpayer need to connect with the agency to ask a question or respond to a correspondence audit.
Taxpayers may also be affected by a new law that requires the IRS to hold tax refunds claiming the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Additional Child Tax Credit until February 15th. The IRS says the delays are due to the additional time needed for these tax refunds to be released and processed through financial institutions. Factoring in weekends and the President’s Day holiday, the IRS is warning many affected taxpayers may not have actual access to their tax refunds until the week of February 27th, if they have filed a completed tax return by the end of January.
For more information on the status of a refund, a taxpayer may use the online resource called “Where’s My Refund?”.
