I accidentally paid a tax refund that I do not owe. I had forgotten that I filed my taxes with my ex husband earlier in the years. And I accidentally filed again.

[kaylee1410]

How do I go about getting the money I paid to the IRS back?

[Mike9241]

your post is confusing.  you can't file a joint return with an ex-spouse unless the legal separation occurred in an ensuing tax year. to file jointly for a tax year you must be married to them on 12/31 of that year. Also, a refund is money due to the taxpayer(s) so why you made a payment is unknown. Please clarify what you did and what tax year is involved.  

[xmasbaby0]

Please explain what you did.   If you were not legally married at the end of 2023, you were not allowed to file as married----not a joint return nor married filing separately.     If you and your now "ex" were still legally married at the end of 2023, then you could choose to file married filing jointly or married filing separately.  Either way---if you did that, it would have been impossible for you to e-file another 2023 tax return using your Social Security number.  The IRS would reject it.

You do not "pay" a refund.  A refund is the money you get back if you paid too much tax.   You pay "tax due" if you did not have enough tax withheld from your paychecks, etc.   You say that you filed again and paid---please explain how that happened and how you paid.

And...check your online account with the IRS to see what is shown there:

https://www.irs.gov/payments/view-your-tax-account

[kaylee1410]

I was legally married for all of 2023. We got our divorce decree in May of 2024. 

he filed married/jointly in April this year. And it had slipped my mind as we had to do it virtually this year and physically separated as we are both overseas in two different countries. He filed as head of household on his account (turbo tax)  and I did not file as we already did. However, I made a mistake as I saw I got an email from the turbo tax application saying oct 31 was the last day to file taxes and mine were not completed. I was confused, as I couldn’t remembered in that moment if I did my taxes or not. So I had panicked as I said I am overseas and 16 hours ahead from the states. So I began to file out my own taxes.

Once I finished filling out everything. I see I had a tax due amount. Turbo tax wouldn’t let me file without paying the tax due amount first. So I proceeded to pay it. Then waited to see if my file would get approved. It ended up getting rejected. The error code I received was  “E-file rejection IND-508-01 means that the first person listed on the return (the primary taxpayer) was listed as the spouse, or was used to claim the spouse exemption on another, previously filed tax return.”

in that moment, I felt absolutely silly. Because I then remembered I had already filed my taxes. I couldn’t believe that the thought didn’t cross my mind. I’ve had a lot of changes in my own life this year and this was by far the most crazy thing I have done. 

im now in the situation where I have filed again when I did not need to and it got rejected. I will leave it as is. But I also paid a tax due amount that I wasn’t supposed to and I am wanting to figure out how to get that money back. It was $650 a little chunk of change. I hope this brings more clarity. 

I tried to describe it as best as I could. Turbo tax initially gave me a limit of characters to type with and it was difficult to explain with a few sentences. 

[kaylee1410]

I was legally married for all of 2023. We got our divorce decree in May of 2024. 

he filed married/jointly in April this year. And it had slipped my mind as we had to do it virtually this year and physically separated as we are both overseas in two different countries. He filed as head of household on his account (turbo tax)  and I did not file as we already did. However, I made a mistake as I saw I got an email from the turbo tax application saying oct 31 was the last day to file taxes and mine were not completed. I was confused, as I couldn’t remembered in that moment if I did my taxes or not. So I had panicked as I said I am overseas and 16 hours ahead from the states. So I began to file out my own taxes.

Once I finished filling out everything. I see I had a tax due amount. Turbo tax wouldn’t let me file without paying the tax due amount first. So I proceeded to pay it. Then waited to see if my file would get approved. It ended up getting rejected. The error code I received was  “E-file rejection IND-508-01means that the first person listed on the return (the primary taxpayer) was listed as the spouse, or was used to claim the spouse exemption on another, previously filed tax return.”

in that moment, I felt absolutely silly. Because I then remembered I had already filed my taxes. I couldn’t believe that the thought didn’t cross my mind. I’ve had a lot of changes in my own life this year and this was by far the most crazy thing I have done. 

im now in the situation where I have filed again when I did not need to and it got rejected. I will leave it as is. But I also paid a tax due amount that I wasn’t supposed to and I am wanting to figure out how to get that money back. It was $650 a little chunk of change. I hope this brings more clarity. 

I tried to describe it as best as I could. Turbo tax initially gave me a limit of characters to type with and it was difficult to explain with a few sentences. 

[VolvoGirl]

First of all he couldn’t file Joint and Head of Household.  It’s either one or the other.  If he filed Head of Household you would need to file as Married filing Separate.  So if your return rejected he must have filed Joint.   Did he have all your info and income for the Joint return?  

I would ask the IRS what they did with your payment.  Did they apply it to the Joint return?   How did you pay the $650?  Did it actually come out of your bank account or credit card?   If your return rejected then maybe the payment did not go through.   

[xmasbaby0]

If you "paid" the tax due by requesting that the money be debited from a card that you entered into the return, the rejected return did not go to the IRS, so neither did the payment.   If the e-file was rejected, then the IRS did not receive it at all.    You need to check your own bank or credit card account to see if money was actually taken out.   

And....as VolvoGirl said---your ex could not file as both joint and Head of Household--he had to pick one filing status  or the other.   If he filed as HOH or married filing separately, then your own e-file would not be rejected for duplicate use of your SSN.   The fact that your own e-file was rejected for the duplicate use of your SSN indicates that he filed a joint return and entered your SSN on that return.   Since you were still legally married in 2023, then the two of you were allowed to file either jointly or married filing separately for 2023.  

You need to find out from your ex exactly what he did, and whether there was tax due or a refund for the joint return.   If there was tax due---bet you would have heard about it.    If there was a refund, then it would have been issued in both names---his name and yours.   So what did he do with the refund?   How did he have your W-2, 1099, or whatever income documents were issued to you for 2023 in order to enter those on a joint return?

You do not mention whether your relationship is now contentious or civil enough to communicate with your ex.  Hopefully you can find out from him what exactly was done with that tax return.  You could pay the IRS $30 for a copy of that joint return.  

You can get a free transcript from the IRS or for a fee of $30, an actual copy of your tax return.

https://www.irs.gov/individuals/get-transcript

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f4506.pdf

 You can also check your online account with the IRS to see what it shows:

Try checking your online account with the IRS (and if you filed a joint return—check for BOTH of you)

https://www.irs.gov/payments/your-online-account