Although Turbo Tax does not get direct updates about your tax refund, their managing bank gets alerts of in -route funds to their account. Most people elect to have their tax preparation fee taken out of their refund and to opt in for services such as the 5 days early. When customers do this, they are basically assigning the right to control their refund to Turbo Tax. In other words, most refunds do not go directly from the IRS to the taxpayer. In the case of Turbo Tax customers and any other tax preparation service, opting in to services means assigning your tax refund and it is rerouted. It is still your tax refund but it makes a pitstop before if is forwarded yo you. So their banking partner is not updated on your refund status but rather alerted of an incoming deposit. Because there is a large margin in number of days that it can take once it leaves their bank to that of the customer, that is why the information made available may be odd by a couple of days. Every bank operates differently with some offering early deposit while others hold customers funds the maximum amount of time legally possible before funds are available. Let's say I bank at Bank A and you at Bank B.Our money leaves whoever is sending it on the same day at the same time. Bank B prides themselves and advertises early deposit. You get your money 2 days later. I checked my account and didn't get mine. Why? Because I bank with Bank A who doesn't offer early deposit and has a practice of making deposits available after the longest possible hold time which gor the same of argument let's say is 7 days. So I am left waiting another 5 days on my money. Banks make money off of investing customers' money. When you consider how many customers a bank has, believe me when I say that holding customer's money makes banks a lot of money. It's usually the banks with physical locations that do this because they have overhead costs to pay whereas the online only banks do not have that expense. The money has to come from somewhere!
