Is your tax refund taking ages to arrive? If you’ve filed your tax return electronically, you should keep calm and wait for at least 21 days. According to the Internal Revenue Service IRS, the average time for a UK tax refund is around 21 days. However, if you are waiting for more than 21 days to get your tax refund amount– you should read this blog.
Before getting to the reasons why your tax refund is delayed, you should check your refund status online. The IRS has a dedicated webpage, “Where’s my refund?” for checking UK tax return status. Go on to this web page to check your refund status. If it doesn’t help as you don’t get enough information on it, you can always call the IRS to get every detail.
DISCLAIMER: You should only call IRS for your UK tax refund if,
• It’s been more than 21 days, and you haven’t received your tax refund.
• The ‘Where’s my refund?” webpage asked you to do so.
6 Reason why your tax refund is delayed
There are several reasons for the delay in your UK tax refunds. It may be because of your mistakes when filing your return or slow processing at IRS. Still, there can be many reasons you haven’t received your tax return yet. Let’s dig deeper to know about the 6 most common reasons for the delay in tax refunds.
A Note: Manually filing your tax return is obsolete and very slow. You should always file your tax return online; it’ll also help you get your tax refund quicker.
1. Errors in your tax return
Any type of errors or omissions in your tax return can cause a delay in your tax refund. The tax return with an error is sent for human review to get it corrected. In case your tax return had some errors, the UK tax refund process could be terminated until errors are corrected. It means you will have to wait for several days or weeks to get your tax refund.
2. Filing an incomplete return
If you’ve mistakenly filed an incomplete return, your tax return will go under review. As a result, the process of your tax return will be halted. The IRS employees will reach out to you with a directive to complete your return or file it again. You can experience a delay in getting the tax refunds until your request is in process.
3. Fall prey to tax fraud
Most people must be familiar with tax fraud. There are various types of tax fraud, including tax refund fraud, in which criminals claim UK tax refunds in your name. Considering the increasing number of tax refund frauds, we suggest you should do some checks as to why you aren’t getting your tax refund. In case you are a victim of tax fraud, immediately report to IRS authorities.
4. Incorrect bank account details
A typo in your bank account number can result in the transfer of a refund to another account. You must be very careful when entering bank details for the direct deposit of your tax refund.
5. Altered tax return details
According to new IRS rules, the taxpayers have to request approval to alter previous tax return details. If you have altered your tax return details to get a tax refund, you’ll have to wait for three weeks until those alterations appear on the IRS system and another 16 weeks to get your tax refund.
6. Tax refund offset for liabilities
IRS can offset your tax refund against any state tax liabilities without any prior notice. If you owe any taxes to the state, you should not expect a tax refund. You are more likely to receive a notice from the federal bureau’s fiscal service. However, you reserve the right to dispute the debt.
Avoid these mistakes while requesting the tax rebate to ensure that you get the tax refunds on time.