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Is Your Tax Refund Late? Here’s Why It Will Take Longer to Get Your Money This Year

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Have you sent in your taxes and realized that your refund still hasn’t arrived months after pressing that “submit” button? Before you start panicking over whether or not your taxes were correctly filed, don’t worry, because it actually may be an issue with the Internal Revenue Service!

The IRS recently acknowledged that it’s experiencing long processing delays across the board due to the pandemic, which could make your tax refund late getting to you. Currently, the estimated delay time for a tax refund is anywhere from six to 10 weeks compared to the usual three weeks it usually takes for people to receive their money. While all tax refunds are affected, people who mailed and submitted paper tax returns, as opposed to filing them online, may see some of the longest delay times. In fact, the agency says it’s holding onto roughly 29 million returns for manual processing.

If you still want to try and peek at where your refund is though, the IRS has a simple refund status checker for you to use. You’ll need your Social Security number or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, filing status, and exact refund amount to see where it is. The IRS also advises people not to file a second tax return if their refund is late. Not only does that create more issues for the agency if they need to handle duplicates, but it’ll be a bigger headache for you in the long run.

It can be hard to sit tight and wait for that check to come, but it’ll be worth it in the end! And if you haven’t sent in those taxes yet, remember that you have until May 17 to do so.

This article originally appeared on our sister site, First for Women.

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