The stimulus payments are affecting processing in a number of ways. IRS employee resources are being diverted to processing those payments rather than tax returns and to answering heavy volumes of calls about the payments.
Also, more tax returns than typical for a given year are being diverted to manual queues due to mismatches between the amount a taxpayer reports as received in stimulus payments and the amounts shown as paid in the IRS database.
The IRS no longer issues refunds on a specific day each week. This practice was discontinued several years ago. Refunds are issued on every business day.
Overall processing is taking longer this year due to continued backlogs and staffing shortages. The delays are not entirely due to the stimulus payments.
@winns91
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