IRS tax refund delay: how many are unprocessed in August?
There are still millions of Americans that are still waiting for tax refunds from last year's unemployment benefits and the wait will be longer still.
As of August 20, there are still 10.1 million unprocessed individual returns, according to the IRS. nearly 20 million were processed in the last month, potentially meaning the delays are at an end.
Why are there delays?
The pandemic.
Usually, the IRS sends refunds within a three-week window, once a tax return has been returned. Now we are in September, and millions are still without their tax returns. The amount of tax returns processed by tax day for 2020 was down 10 million from the year before. In total, 135.8 million returns were processed in 2021.
The delay has been exacerbated by people being unable to come into work, and also with the swathes of financial support that the IRS is supporting Americans with. Many of the claims need to be hand-read, meaning excruciatingly slow turnover times for cases.
The Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC are included in this, and with the latter affecting 90% of American households, there is certainly a lot to go through.
Check to see where your refund is
You can check to see the status of your refund by using the Refund Status Tool on the IRS website.
With millions of overdue refunds, usage for the IRS tool rocketed to more than 483 million yo May 2021, according to a report by the Taxpayer Advocate Service. However, many taxpayers couldn’t get updates on when to expect their refund or what was causing the delay, showing the desperation many Americans are feeling as pandemic support begins to wind down.