How to try and avoid a delayed refund as tax season begins – KCRG

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa (KCRG) -Starting Monday, people across the country can begin filing their 2021 taxes. While leaders are warning of potential delays, there are some things you can do to try and get your refund quicker.

“The IRS right now has an unacceptable backlog,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.

The White House says pandemic related challenges, coupled with a lack of funding and staff at the IRS is leading to delays processing federal tax returns.

“The agency has not been equipped with the resources it needs to adequately serve tax payers in normal times, let alone a pandemic,” Psaki explained.

As of December, the IRS still had 6 million unprocessed individual returns from last year needing corrections.

Tom Wagner, the President of Wagner Accounting and Tax Service in Dubuque told us making sure all of the necessary information is included up front, can help with refund speed.

“If the return has to be adjusted for this child tax credit or these stimulus payments that have to be reconciled, those are the ones that could take you know 3-6 months, I’ve had some clients waiting for refunds for that long,” Wagner said.

Families who’ve received stimulus money or monthly child tax credit payments need to look out for a letter in the mail from the IRS to help them on their taxes.

Another way to avoid a delay? File electronically for both federal and state taxes.

“We don’t recommend that people try and mail in a return because the processing for such thing is going to be probably a long time,” Wagner explained.

Wagner said unemployment income will be taxed this year, and people who made enough income sports betting or through cryptocurrency should expect to pay taxes on that income as well.

Federal taxes are due April 18th and Iowa’s tax deadline is May 2nd. While deadlines were extended the last couple of years due to the pandemic, this year there are no plans to extend them.