The new year is here and it’s time to start thinking about filing your taxes, especially if you’re planning on making your final estimated tax payment by January 15th. It can be quite the hassle trying to get together all of the paperwork, forms and other required tax data, but it’s gotta be done!
If you’re one of the people who have overpaid their taxes and are expecting a refund, it can be quite the hassle waiting to hear back from the IRS as to when you’ll be getting your money, but there are things you can do to ensure a fast tax refund.
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3 Ways To Ensure You Get Your Tax Refund Quickly
There are a variety of things you can do to make sure that you get your refund as quick as possible. Here are the top 3.
E-file Your Taxes This Year
If you’re one of the people who aren’t e-filing, you may want to consider going that route this year if you want to get your refund quickly. Filing a paper return can mean waiting up to four weeks to get the status of your refund.
To join the over 100 million others doing e-filed tax returns, all you’ll need is a computer, internet access and a tax preparation software. There are a ton of good options out there for e-filing and a while back I wrote about a few of my favorite free or low cost tax preparation options. Among them were TurboTax, CompleteTax, Tax Act and H & R Block.
If you make less than a certain adjusted gross income you may also be eligible for the government’s Free File program where you can get free tax preparation with some affiliated companies. Check the government site linked above for details.
Check For Common Errors
If you make errors on your return it can delay your refund, so it can be a good idea to give your return a good once over before filing it. Consider checking what the IRS suggests are the most common tax-filing errors:
- Incorrect or missing Social Security numbers for you, your spouse or dependents.
- Incorrect tax entered based on taxable income and filing status.
- Checking more than one filing status.
- Errors when figuring out income, deductions, credits and exemptions.
- Withholding and estimated tax payments entered on the wrong line.
- Math errors.
- Entering items on the wrong lines.
Use Direct Deposit For Fast Refunds
One way to ensure that you get your money quick is to make sure that you’ve set up direct deposit for your refund.
Not only does it save time but it will prevent the check from getting lost or stolen in the mail. Just make sure to provide the IRS with your account number and routing number when filing, and your refund will be deposited directly into your account.
When Is Information About Your Refund Available?
You can go to the IRS site 72 hours after they acknowledges receipt of the return that you e-filed, and check the status of your 2015 tax return. If you filed a paper return you will have to wait up to four weeks.
When checking for your refund make sure to have a copy of your 2015 tax return available as you’ll need information from the documents when checking the refund status.
So where can you check your refund status?
Federal Refund Status
To check the status of your federal refund you can go to the IRS website and click on “Where’s My Refund“. It will ask you for your social security number, your filing status and the refund amount you were expecting. You can also call the IRS at 1-800-829-4477 (24 hours a day, seven days a week for automated refund information).
State Refund Status
For state refund status checking for your refund may be a bit more involved. Different states have different ways to check – from online to phone only. Find your state in the table below to check your refund status.
Also getting them done early is a sure way to see your possible refund faster. Many people tend to wait until the end of tax season, either due to the fact that they have to wait on others to provide information (generally in the case of K-1s from MLPs & partnerships) or out of their own laziness. This causes a log-jam both at many tax preparation offices and with the IRS having to process a large number of returns within a small window.
You can even have the return prepared and ready to go before the IRS makes filing available, so all that is needed is the push of a button one filing is permitted. This is what I do–my business and personal return are already prepared in my tax program, and all I have to do is press the button to transmit them once the 9th and 17th of January comes around, respectively.
When using commercial software, the e-filing and error-checking are done for you. So that takes care of items 1 and 2. Regarding item 3, with direct deposit the IRS is able to issue 9 out of 10 refunds within 21 days, as opposed to 4-6 weeks for a check in the mail, according to Intuit.
It’d be nice to be able to file my taxes real early, but I have to wait for the bank statements to arrive. One year I filed my taxes online, and a couple of weeks later received a corrected statement from an institution. So I had to file an amended return. So now I have everything ready to go, but wait until early April to actually push the button, just in case.
Even better is to avoid a refund altogether. A refund is like giving the government an interest free loan, as they say. My goal each year is to owe some taxes, just enough to avoid a penalty. That’s very hard to achieve though.
No way I could ever file my taxes in January- just too many items I need to wait for. I guess if you don’t have investments, savings accounts and what not you could file as soon as possible. I usually wait till the end of March to file mine for the simple fact that my investment institution tends to change or update the form every year in March.