48 hour hold

[Lady Luck]

I filed on 1/29/2022 and received an email shortly after about a 48 hour hold because I used a new log in this year and it has been well over the 48 hours has this happened to anyone else??

[HeatherPLO · Accepted solution]

Please reference the Help Article here concerning Pending returns.  It states your return can be pending for several days. Also, the IRS is experiencing a backlog from processing last year's returns as well which it also acknowledges.   

[Lady Luck]

Turbo tax is holding my return it has not been submitted to the Irs yet

[BrandiLO1]

If you were notified that a tax return that contains your information is being filed and that the return is being placed on hold for 48 hours, this might be a sign that someone is trying to use your identity to file a tax return. The return has been placed on hold to allow you to cancel it if it doesn't belong to you. You can read more about the hold here.

[Lady Luck]

I used a new email this year when filing it’s been after the 48 hour hold and my status is still pending how long does it take to release to irs

[DaraLO]

After the 48 hour period is over, TurboTax will transmit the return in accordance with IRS regulations.  If you believe it's been well over the 48-hour period, please contact us for further assistance.

Reference:  I received an email about a return with my information ...

[Lady Luck]

Did that already as well and I can’t seem to get a logical answer to what the hold up is. The fact that the rep tried to tell me that the irs is backed up has nothing to do with a return that has NOT been transmitted to them

[mesquitebean]

A 48-hour hold for identity purposes is an internal TurboTax maneuver to give you a chance to contest it if it was not you filing the return.  After that first 48 hours (if uncontested), TurboTax then allows the efile to go to the IRS, where it then starts the usual process that can take 24-48 hours after the IRS receives it before the IRS indicates acceptance or rejection.  Once the IRS receives the efiled return, it can sometimes be sooner than 24 hours and sometimes longer than 48.   

If you filed on 1/29/22, then your 48-hour hold at TurboTax should be up today 1/31/22.  And it should go on to the IRS today, where it should in most cases be accepted/rejected in the next 24-48 hours (or possibly sooner or later).   Until accepted/rejected by the IRS, the efile status in your TurboTax account should show as "pending".

[AndreArceneaux408]

Did your situation resolve?? I am in the same boat. Beyond 48 hours (72) & still pending (not sent to IRS (TT "sends" by making available for DL on their servers, which has not happened) or State of CA) & I used a new email this year and already called and verified the return was indeed mine, yet was told to wait the full 48 .. I did, and still here. SMH. 

[Lady Luck]

Yes it resolved itself on day 3 so if you are on the 72 hour mark it will be accepted soon  

[Lady Luck]

But be mindful that if it gets rejected and not accepted you WILL wait ANOTHER 72 hours after you fix it smh I was rejected the first time 

[Aravindan]

Does this 48 hour hold business days or includes weekends?

If i had submitted mine in middle of night like 2am on friday, do i wait till Sunday or Tuesday of the following week?

After the hold email, i had called turbotax and each support i talked to has a different answer everytime.

First support call -  i told him about the hold email, but he suggested walking through the issue with cobrowser.

I was asking if there was a flag that can removed based on my call back confirmation, but he said the issue i am seeing on screen "We had a problem while saving your return for filing. Please try to e-file again and if that fails contact customer service." cannot be resolved after walking through various options and tried to help me by escalating to resolution desk.

His manager said lets wait 48 hours and see if it goes through. Since the 48 hours have crossed in weekend and another 14 hours passed, i called back, they suggested i wait again till weekday. 

It is so frustrating that there is no clear answer to 

1) if the user calls back to the number in the hold email, is the hold actually lifted ?

2) Is the hold on the original email from past years filing or the new email?

2) Is the error message while trying to file - "We had a problem while saving your return for filing. Please try to e-file again and if that fails contact customer service."  due to the hold or some other issue? First support person thought it is unresolvable and trying to refund back by connecting to resolution desk.

3) Is the hold actually 48 consecutive hours or business days hours? 

Appreciate any inputs as i am worried of the little time left to file.

Payment was done already using cc.

[mesquitebean]

@Aravindan 

If you're referring to a 48-hour hold after efiling for identity purposes, that's an internal TurboTax maneuver and likely all done by computer and automated, so "business days" is not a factor.     In any case, TurboTax Support is open 7 days a week this time of year.

A couple of folks in this thread said it took 72 hours for them, but I'm not sure if they meant that was how long for TurboTax computer to automatically send it, or for the IRS to acknowledge it from the time they filed it.

The FAQ below explains why a 48-hour hold can be placed. 

If the explanations in the FAQ below don't apply to you, and if it makes you think you might be a victim of ID theft, you need to phone TurboTax Support during the 48-hour window so that TurboTax can cancel the efiling of that return.

At some point after 48 hours, if a filer has not phoned to indicate that it was not them filing the return, the return will automatically be efiled.   You shouldn't have to resubmit.

Please review this FAQ:
FAQ:  I received an email about a return with my information being on hold

https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/security/help/i-received-an-email-about-a-return-with-my-informati...

[Aravindan]

@mesquitebean,

Thank you for the quick response. 

I think this thread was discussing about 48 hour hold before efiling, not after efiling. I understand the compromised account scenario.

Related link from the post - https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/security/help/i-received-an-email-about-a-return-with-my-informati...

Normally , in the past i have filed in the weekends. In this case of a 48 hour hold expiring in the weekend , the expectation was Turbotax "should have" attempted to file automatically as per their 48 hour hold email.  Or at least after 10 hours of crossing the 48 hour mark. if that had happened and sent confirmation through email or text that it was automatically efiled and waiting for confirmation from IRS, then it would have calmed my nerves. However that did not happen.

Hence the question of how the 48 hour was calculated (whether consecutively from the time it was placed on hold or whether it was 48 hours of business days).

Also when the hold is in place, if you try to file through turbo tax , the turbo tax error message was - ""We had a problem while saving your return for filing. Please try to e-file again and if that fails contact customer service." 

If the error message was phrased something like " Your account is currently on hold. Please try agian later" or "Your account is currently disabled from filing due to security reasons, please contact customer service" , that would have helped to understand that account is still in the lockdown phase.  

I had called their customer service again but turbotax support is not able to confirm whether the account is still on hold. They suggested to wait it out till 72 hours or the next working day call back to check again. 

Frustrating part is that not knowing whether the error is due to the 48 hour hold or something else. Have to wait for that period to pass before knowing further.

Additionally the internal turbotax maneuver does not seem to be automated. One would think upon receiving the 48 hour hold email specifying to call back to confirm if it is really you or some one else, and you call back immediately after the email and specify it is indeed you from a different account, you would expect the hold to lapse immediately upon user confirmation or by the said 48 hours or few hours after the 48 hours, since that did not happen even after 62 hours, i am guessing that it is either not automated or is not automated to continue in weekends (may be a batch process that triggers during weekdays).

I will wait and see if that changes in a day or so... 

Normally online applications will have  -

1) some kind of error message to error code mapping that can help their customer support identify root cause of error message (if not the exact root cause, some where close to the path of debugging the root cause)

or 

2)some kind of logging system like splunk or kibana or even raw logs that record the errors encountered in web applications. when you cobrowse the problem with the customer and reproduce the errors, they can connect with their iT to determine what is failing by parsing the logs quickly.

Was disappointed they were not able to help troubleshoot that way.

I will reply back if it gets resolved later.

[mesquitebean]

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@ Aravindan wrote:

I think this thread was discussing about 48 hour hold before efiling, not after efiling. I understand the compromised account scenario.

---

It's a matter of semantics, but technically you are correct.  Your submitted efile is arrested before traveling any further.  I guess we can use the term "submission".  After you submitted it, it was put on hold by TurboTax servers and held in-house before it could go to the IRS.  The TurboTax FAQ uses the phrase "is being filed."

As for whether it's an automated release (of an uncontested submission), I don't work for TurboTax. so that's why I said "likely" in my answer above when I first used the term, since I have no way of knowing how they have it all programmed.   Whether a TurboTax person actually looks at all of the uncontested on-hold submissions regardless before manually letting the efiles proceed, I don't know.

Of course, if it was not you and you wanted to cancel the submission, then that would definitely require intervention by someone at TurboTax during the hold window.

I later in the same posting used the word "automatically" again, but in that case I meant that at some point after 48 hours it would be sent on without any additional intervention from a filer being necessary.   The FAQ says:

"After the 48 hour period is over, TurboTax will transmit the return in accordance with IRS regulations."

Whether that's all programmed or requires an employee to do it, I don't know.

 If you need specific info about their procedures, that's a question for the TurboTax folks if you have occasion to speak to them again, such as if the efile is not released soon to the IRS.

If the Support agent doesn't know the answer, see if they will let you to speak to either a supervisor or someone from the Security Dept.  Maybe that department would know about this issue.

Hopefully, it will proceed on to the IRS soon.  Good luck.