@Dklein1
There is no refund for having taxes withheld from your unemployment checks. The tax that is withheld from your unemployment is credited towards the tax on your tax return for the year.
Here it is June 2022, not 2020, but this thread, which was started nearly a year ago, is about the unemployment exclusion on 2020 federal tax returns. For 2020, up to $10,200 of unemployment compensation was excluded from federal taxable income. The law providing the exclusion was passed in 2021, after many people had already filed their 2020 tax returns. As DawnC explained in the post above yours, which you gave cheers to, the IRS automatically sent refunds to people who were entitled to the exclusion but didn't get it on their tax returns because they filed before the tax software was updated for the new law.
You should have gotten an additional refund from the IRS if all of the following are true.
- You reported unemployment benefits as income on your 2020 tax return, on Schedule 1 line 7.
- You did not get the unemployment exclusion on the 2020 tax return that you filed. The unemployment exclusion would appear as a negative amount on Schedule 1 line 8, with the abbreviation UCE on the dotted line to the left of the amount.
- The tax on your 2020 Form 1040 line 16 is not zero.
- Your 2020 Adjusted Gross Income (AGI), not including unemployment, is less than $150,000. In other words, Form 1040 line 11 minus Schedule 1 line 7 is less than $150,000.
Note that none of these four conditions has anything to do with the tax that was taken out of your unemployment checks. Also note that the unemployment exclusion applies only to unemployment benefits that you received in 2020. It does not apply to any other year.
If you have looked at your 2020 tax return and you think you should have gotten an additional refund based on the four conditions above, but you did not get it, check Your Online Account on the IRS web site to see if it says that they sent the refund to you. Also check your bank account records for 2020 and early 2021 to see if there was a deposit from the IRS. Note that the amount of the refund would be the amount by which the exclusion reduces the tax on your 2020 tax return. The refund would not be $10,200, and it would not be the amount of tax that was taken out of your unemployment checks.
The IRS has specifically said that you should not file an amended return to get the unemployment exclusion. If you are sure that you are due a refund, and you are sure that it was not sent to you, you will have to contact the IRS.
