Thursday, October 24, 2013

Slowing Down the IRS


We generally only think about the Internal Revenue Service between January and mid-April, but the agency is busy the whole year-round. And because it was closed for a couple of weeks during the government shutdown at the beginning of this month, it won’t be ready to accept returns starting January 21, 2014, as previously announced. That date has been pushed back to either January 28 or February 4.

The people who file that early are generally those expecting big refunds. Last year, the IRS handed out $135 billion in refunds prior to March 1. That’s more than it distributed between March 2 and May 10, even though many more taxpayers filed returns in that period.

This will be the second year in a row in which the IRS has gotten a late start. At the beginning of this year, there was a delay when haggling over the fiscal cliff left everyone unsure of what the federal tax rates would be. Just like in 2013, though, one date hasn’t changed: Your taxes are still due on April 15.

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