After you file

MY REFUND WAS LESS THAN I EXPECTED

There can be a number of reasons why your refund was less than the amount you expected. First of all, look carefully at your actual tax returns.  There is sometimes confusion about the amount of refund to expect when users misinterpret the “summary” they saw in TurboTax. The amount of your refund is on your tax return.  Federal refund is on line 34 on Form 1040  State tax forms are all different so we cannot tell you what line to look at on your state form.  BUT it is important to actually LOOK at your tax return forms yourself and see the amounts of your tax refunds and/or tax due.  A lot of confusion would be avoided by doing that.

 

TurboTax does not receive feedback from the IRS regarding money that was offset from your refund.  If you owed back taxes, child support, student loan debt, etc. you will receive a letter of explanation from the IRS in several weeks.  The WMR site will contain a message regarding your offset.  It is also possible that the IRS caught a mistake you made and reduced your refund. 

 

A possible reason for the reduction could be that the recovery rebate credit was completed incorrectly and you may have entered the amount of stimulus already received wrong, which could have reduced the refund you thought you were seeing.