SFAB
New Member

State taxes owed deducted from federal return but I already paid state taxes separately?

I filed my state and federal taxes on 3/31/2021. For privacy, I’ll pick arbitrary dollar amounts to explain my situation.

 

When I filed my 2019 taxes, the return was direct deposited to bank “A”. This year I changed the direct deposit to bank “B”. My federal return was $5000 but I owed $700 to state “X” and $800 to state “Y”. I elected to pay the state taxes out of my bank account so the $700 and $800 were paid immediately when I filed. 

I received a federal return for only $3500. I assume it was not $5000 as the $1500 was deducted for what was owed to the 2 states. Since I already paid the state taxes, shouldn’t the federal refund still be the full amount? Another odd observation is that the federal refund went to bank “A” and is dated for 3/17/2021 (2 weeks before I filed). 

What happened?