A whole lot of people are experiencing the same issue.
If you filed your 2020 taxes and haven't received your refund, your experience is very common - the IRS is encountering major delays in processing 2020 tax returns, and is almost impossible to reach by phone.
The IRS Where’s My Refund? site is still the best first place to go for information.
Why is this happening? Tax season (normally Jan 1 - Apr 15) is the busiest time of the year for the IRS. This year, they have also had to deal with major changes in the tax law, including ones that were passed retroactively in the past two weeks. They are also struggling with the same COVID workplace and workforce issues the rest of the country has encountered.
According to the Washington Post (Mar 12, 2021):
Nearly 7 million tax filers are in limbo and facing substantial delays in getting refunds so far this tax filing season, as the Internal Revenue Service struggles to keep up with the demands of issuing stimulus checks and implementing myriad tax code changes from coronavirus relief packages, including the one President Biden signed this week.
There are 6.7 million returns that have not yet been processed, more than three times the number in the same period last year, when fewer than 2 million returns faced delayed processing, IRS data shows.
The delays are largely a result of a year’s worth of extraordinary stimulus measures that have created more complicated tax returns for millions of Americans. The IRS was already straining to adjust after the December stimulus package. The newest package, the American Rescue Plan, adds even more tasks for the agency, including sending out another round of one-time payments, making changes to tax rules to help unemployed workers and paying out a new child tax benefit.
