How To Check Your Tax Return

Use The Recovery Rebate Credit Worksheet To Calculate How Much You Are Due

by John Waggoner, AARP, January 13, 2021

En español | The Internal Revenue Service issued about 160 million stimulus checks to eligible Americans for the first round of economic impact payments that began in April. Millions more payments, dubbed EIP 2, started going out in late December for the second round of stimulus. Nevertheless, some people never got their first-round stimulus checks, while others didnt receive the full amount to which they were entitled. The same will be true for the second round of stimulus payments.

If you didnt receive money from the first or second round of stimulus payments or you didnt get the full amount you should have dont give up. Youll need to file the standard 1040 federal tax return form, or the 1040-SR tax return for people 65 or older, to get your missing stimulus money in the form of a tax credit that will either lower the amount of tax you owe or increase the size of your refund.

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How Do I Check My State Tax Refund

Its possible to check you tax refund status by visiting the revenue departments Refund Information page. On that page you can learn more about the states tax refunds and you can check the status of your refund. Make sure to have your SSN, filing status and the exact amount of your refund handy to check your refund.

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What Happens If I Received A Partial Payment Or Did Not Receive My Stimulus Check Before I File My Taxes

If you were eligible, but received a partial payment or did not receive a stimulus check for the first and second stimulus payments, you can only claim it as a recovery rebate credit by filing your 2020 tax return or amending a previously filed 2020 tax return. TurboTax will ask simple questions to see if you received your stimulus checks and how much you received in order to see if youre eligible for the Recovery Rebate Credit.

The third stimulus payments under theAmerican Rescue Plan were issued during 2021 after the relief bill was signed into law on March 11, 2021. If you do not receive your third stimulus payment or you only received a partial payment, you will be able to claim more in the form of a recovery rebate credit when you file your tax year 2021 taxes.

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One More Thing To Know About Your Tax Refund

Its actually something you kind of want to avoid. It may seem great to get a big check from the government, but all a tax refund tells you is that youve been overpaying your taxes all year and needlessly living on less of your paycheck the whole time.

For example, if you got a $3,000 tax refund, youve been giving up $250 a month all year. Could having an extra $250 every month have helped with the bills? If you want to get that money now rather than later, you can adjust your withholdings by giving your employer a new IRS Form W-4 .

The Tool Displays Progress In Three Phases:

• Return received
• Refund approved

When the status changes to approved, this means the IRS is preparing to send the refund as a direct deposit to the taxpayer’s bank account or directly to the taxpayer in the mail, by check, to the address used on their tax return.

The IRS updates the Where’s My Refund? tool once a day, usually overnight, so taxpayers don’t need to check the status more often.

Taxpayers allow time for their financial institution to post the refund to their account or for it to be delivered by mail. Calling the IRS won’t speed up a tax refund. The information available on Where’s My Refund? is the same information available to IRS telephone assistors.

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How To Track Your Tax Refund

Many taxpayers prefer to get their tax refund via direct deposit. When you fill out your income tax return youll be prompted to give your bank account details. That way, the IRS can put your refund money right in your account, and you wont have to wait for a check to arrive in the mail.

If you file your taxes early, you dont have to wait until after the tax deadline to get your tax refund. Depending on the complexity of your tax return, you could get your tax refund in just a couple of weeks. To get a timeline for when your refund will arrive, you can go to www.irs.gov/refunds. You can check the status of your refund within 24 hours after the IRS notifies you that it has received your e-filed tax return .

In a given tax year, you may want to know how big your refund will be so you can plan what to do with it. You may want to use it to boost your emergency fund, save for retirement or make an extra student loan or mortgage payment.

Tax Deductions And Tax Credits Explained

Remember that a tax deduction reduces your taxable income, cutting your tax bill indirectly by reducing the income that’s subject to a marginal tax rate. A tax credit is a dollar-for-dollar discount on your tax bill. So, if you owe $1,000 but qualify for a $500 tax credit, your tax bill goes down to $500.

What if youre eligible for tax credits that are greater than what you owe say, $1,000 in tax credits with a $500 liability? Whether you get that $500 difference refunded to you will depend on whether the tax credits you qualify are refundable or not. Refundable tax credits go into your tax refund if they exceed what you owe. By contrast, some tax credits are nonrefundable, which means they have the power to reduce your tax liability down to zero but cant be refunded to you if they exceed your liability. Our tax return calculator will take all of this into account when figuring out what you can expect at tax time.

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Paying Into Registered Pension Schemes And Overseas Pension Schemes

Fill in boxes 1 to 3 for payments to registered pension schemes and box 4 for payments to overseas pension schemes.

You can claim tax relief on your personal contributions to a registered pension scheme if you paid them before you reached age 75 and have:

• been a UK resident in the tax year

• had taxable UK earnings, such as employment income or profits from self-employment

• had UK taxable earnings from overseas Crown employment

• been a UK resident when you joined the pension scheme, and at any time in the 5 tax years before 2021 to 2022 tax year

Do not include any amounts for:

• personal term assurance contributions

• your employers own contributions

• contributions taken from your pay before it was taxed

There is more information about pension types on GOV.UK.

Box : Benefit From Pre

Pre-owned assets includes land and buildings or chattels, for example, works of art, furniture, antiques, cars or yachts, or any assets held in a settlement.

You may have to pay a tax charge on benefits received if you previously owned or helped to buy assets .

You may have to pay tax if during the 2021 to 2022 tax year if you:

• occupied land without paying a full market rent for it

• used or enjoyed goods without paying fully for the benefit

• could benefit from property youve settled if income from the property is treated as yours

• at some time since 17 March 1986 you owned the property youre now benefiting from

• owned and sold property and used the proceeds to buy the property youre now benefiting from

• gave someone else property, including cash, and they used it to buy the property youre now benefiting from

• settled assets into the trust that you can benefit on

Tell us in box 21 how you worked out the benefit or charge that you put in box 20.

Do not include the benefit if:

• the property could be liable to Inheritance Tax when you die

• the total benefit for the year is £5,000 or less

• you made the cash gift before 6 April 2014

There is more information about pre-owned assets and help working out your benefit in the Inheritance Tax Manual 44000.

You can also contact the Probate and Inheritance Tax Helpline:

Telephone: 0300 123 1072Outside UK: +44 300 123 1072

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Personal Contributions With Full Relief Still To Claim

Box 2: Payments to a retirement annuity contract

If your retirement annuity contract provider does not use the relief at source scheme they do not claim the basic rate tax relief on your behalf. Put your total personal contributions to the retirement annuity contract in the 2021 to 2022 tax year in box 2.

Box 3: Payments to your employers scheme which were not deducted from your pay before tax

In some schemes, an employer takes your personal contributions from your pay before they tax whats left. If you paid into such a scheme and no tax relief was given, you can claim that tax relief now. Put the total unrelieved amount you paid in the 2021 to 2022 tax year in box 3.

This may happen if:

• you paid more contributions than you earned in that job

• your employer could not take any contributions from your pay before taxing it, for example if you were paid close to 5 April

• youre not an employee but are a member of a public services pension scheme or a marine pilots fund

Do not include any personal contributions that had relief at source, such as a group personal pension scheme.

Box 4: Payments to an overseas pension scheme

You may get tax relief if youre eligible for migrant member relief, transitional corresponding relief or relief under a double taxation agreement. Put the amount that qualifies for tax relief in box 4.

What You Can Do To Help Us Stop Fraud

If we suspect fraud is being committed against you, we will send you a letter requesting verification of your identification. Please respond to our letter as soon as possible. The quickest way to respond is to visit myVTax and click Respond to Correspondence.

Learn more about identity theft and tax refund fraud, how to detect it, how to avoid it, and how to report it if you believe you are a victim.

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How Quickly Will I Get My Refund

We issue most refunds in less than 21 calendar days. However, if you filed on paper and are expecting a refund, it could take six months or more to process your return. Wheres My Refund? has the most up to date information available about your refund.

It is also taking the IRS more than 21 days to issue refunds for some tax returns that require review including incorrect Recovery Rebate Credit amounts, or that used 2019 income to figure the Earned Income Tax Credit and Additional Child Tax Credit .

What Makes Up Your Tax Return

Weve sent you a tax return that we think matches your personal circumstances. But you need to make sure the booklet has all the relevant supplementary pages.

Read the first 2 pages of your tax return before you fill in the form. If you put X in any of the Yes boxes on page TR 2, you need to fill in and send us the supplementary pages for that income or gain too. If you do not, well treat your tax return as incomplete and send it back to you.

You can from our website.

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Why Did The Irs Send Refunds From Unemployment Compensation Received In 2020

The COVID-19 relief legislation known as the American Rescue Plan was signed into law by President Joe Biden in March 2021. The law allowed for a tax break: The first $10,200 of 2020 jobless benefits was made nontaxable income for the 2020 tax year.

However, many Americans had already filed their taxes by the time the law was passed, meaning that millions overpaid taxes on their unemployment income and were owed money back.

The IRS began sending additional tax refunds for those unemployment corrections in May 2021, and it announced in Nov. 2021 that it had issued 430,000 additional refunds. The Jan. 6 announcement shows the full scale of the corrections, with nearly 12 million total refunds related to 2020 unemployment compensation.

Americans whose returns were corrected by the IRS should receive a special letter explaining the changes. But now that the IRS has finished correcting 2020 tax returns, if you overpaid taxes on unemployment income for that year, you’ll need to file an amended tax return to claim it.

Keep in mind that the tax break is for individuals who earned less than $150,000 in adjusted gross income and only for unemployment insurance received during 2020 and not in 2021. Also note that the IRS could have seized the refund to cover a past-due debt, such as unpaid federal or state taxes and child support.

How To Get A Faster Tax Refund

Here are four things that can help keep your Wheres my refund worries under control.

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Thewheres My Refund Online Tool

The IRS indicates that it issues most refunds within three weeks if you choose direct deposit and youve e-filed your tax return. Refunds can take six to eight weeks if you file a paper return.

The IRS urges taxpayers to file electronically with direct deposit as soon as they have the information they need. This will help speed refunds during the ongoing public health and economic crisis in 2021.

Go to Wheres My Refund? on the IRS website to check the status of your refund. The tool is updated every 24 hours. Youll need some information at your fingertips:

• Your Social Security number or Employer Identification Number as it appears on your tax return
• The filing status you claimed on your return: single, head of household, married filing jointly, married filing separately, or qualifying widow
• The exact refund amount as shown on your tax return

Youll be redirected to a Refund Status Results screen when you plug in this information. This screen should say one of three things:

• Return received
• Refund approved

You should see an estimated date for deposit into your bank account if your refund has been approved. There should also be a separate date for when you should contact your bank if you havent received your refund by then.

You cant use the Wheres My Refund? tool to get information about your 2020-21 stimulus checks, also referred to as economic impact payments. Use the Get My Payment tool instead if youre still expecting one of those checks.

If You Have Not Paid Enough Tax

Box 2

If you owe less than £3,000 tax for the 2021 to 2022 tax year, well try to collect it through your wages or pension from 6 April 2023. But, we can only do this if we receive your paper tax return by 31 October 2022 or file online by 30 December 2022, and:

• you have enough wages or pension to collect the tax you owe

• it does not double the amount of tax you pay on this income

• it does not cause you to pay more than half of this income in tax

We cannot collect any Class 2 National Insurance contributions this way as it may affect your claim to certain benefits.

The deadline for paying Class 2 National Insurance is 31 January 2023.

There is more information about National Insurance on GOV.UK

Only put X in box 2 if you do not want us to do this and would prefer to pay any tax through your Self Assessment by 31 January 2023.

Box 3

From 6 April 2022 we will try to collect any tax due on the following sources through your wages or pension:

• Child Benefit payments and your income is over £50,000

• savings or investments income

• casual earnings or commission for the 2022 to 2023 tax year

If the income is more than £10,000 well not normally do this.

Only put X in box 3 if you do not want us to do this and would prefer to pay any tax through your Self Assessment by 31 January 2023.

There is more information about paying directly to us on GOV.UK.

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