Ten Possible Reasons for Your Federal Tax Refund Delay

Claiming head of household when you aren’t one.  many single people will claim this tax filing status because it results in less tax paid or higher refund, whichever is applicable.

    Claiming education credits when you aren’t eligible because you didn’t enroll in any classes or if your educational institution isn’t eligible to use with the education tax credit.

    Claiming the child care credit and you didn’t pay for day care or didn’t have children

    Claiming EIC by claiming dependents you don’t have.  EIC is the Earned Income Credit, designed for low income workers.  It gives a credit to low income workers to encourage them to work by not having all their income taxed away from them, making them just not want to work at all.  The more kids you have, the bigger the EIC.  So claiming fake kids is a common tax fraud method.  And a top reason why you may have a federal tax refund delay on your hands.

Free Tax Filing 2014

    You filed so early that some tax forms weren’t ready yet.  In this case the IRS just sits on your return until all software is ready to handle all tax forms.

    You put the wrong bank account info for your refund direct deposit.  Your tax refund bounces back to the IRS and they have to contact you, etc.

    You didn’t file electronically.  Paper tax returns mailed to the IRS have to be processed by hand.  This adds at least a month to the arrival of your tax refund.

    You had to change something after your submitted your taxes.  Amendments can’t be filed electronically so basically you’ll be on the same time schedule as the paper filers.
Tax Extension Form 4868

    You claimed the education credit for 2012.  The late decisions by congress on the fiscal cliff delayed a lot of programming the IRS had to do to get tax software ready for tax season.  IRS form 8863 wasn’t ready for processing by the IRS until March so if you filed before they were ready to process that form then your tax refund got delayed.

Income Tax Calculator

    You filed at the last minute.  If you filed late or right around the tax due date, then you aren’t alone!  So many people file at the deadline or right around it that the IRS has trouble processing that huge glut in a timely manner.  Just wait it out and you’ll eventually get your IRS tax refund.