By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. —If you've filed your tax return, the IRS can tell you where it is in the process of getting your refund back to you.
"If you filed electronically and use direct deposit, about 90% of all the refunds get back to the taxpayer within 21 days," said IRS spokesperson Michael Devine. "Sometimes it can take less time. For me it did. It only took about 10 days, but we have some issues that we may have to work on with some returns that may need extra attention."
There is a tool on the Internet to answer your questions.
"It's free and it's very, very easy," Devine said. "Go to IRS.gov and click on the refunds link and go to Where's My Refund? You need to know your Social Security number. or the primary Social Security number, the one at the top of the tax refund, your filing status, single, married filing jointly, whatever that is and then the exact dollar amount of the refund and then our system will tell you what the status is."
If you haven't filed yet and need your money back as fast as you can get it, file electronically.
"If you file electronically, usually you're not going to have an arithmetic mistake, which means you added the numbers wrong," Devine said. "The computer's just not going to let you make a mistake that's probably going to slow your return down. The problems come if you filed early, if maybe you didn't wait until you got all of your W-2s."
However, the longer you wait, the bigger chance a scammer has to file in your place, so once you have all of your information, file right away.