- Mark as New
- Bookmark
- Subscribe
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Permalink
- Report Inappropriate Content
Other financial discussions
Turbotax is not a bank and does not have any IRS funds.
No one here can tell you if you are eligible or when the IRS will send your payment. You can check the IRS web site. In some cases (read below) the IRS is supposed to mail a check or debit card instead of making a direct deposit. If you don't receive a payment by January 15, you can claim a credit on your 2020 tax return.
Read more below
Some customers who used refund transfer to pay their turbotax fees from their refunds are experiencing delays due to a mistake at the IRS. If you used refund transfer to have your fees deducted from your refund, that means your refund was sent to Turbotax's banking partner SBTPG, to open a temporary account in your name, receive the refund, subtract the fees, forward the rest of the money to your regular account, and close the temporary account.
That means that the IRS never had your real banking info, just the temporary closed account. The IRS had a web site open through October where you could have updated your banking information.
The IRS should not try to make deposits into these closed accounts, because they know which banks provide this service. During round 1, when the IRS mistakenly sent stimulus payments to SBTPG, SPTBG tried to match them to their customers and forward the money. However for round 2, SBTPG has decided to bounce all payments back to the IRS for security reasons.
So if you used refund transfer to pay your fees, and if you never updated the IRS with your banking information, the IRS should recognize this fact and mail you a check or debit card. If the IRS makes a mistake and tries to do a direct deposit, it will bounce, and the IRS would normally mail a check or debit card later, but it takes longer.
The new law says the IRS can only make payments until January 15. After that, if you don't receive a deposit, check or debit card, you can claim the rebate as a credit on your tax return and it will be added to your refund.
Turbotax has no idea if you are eligible, and no control over where the IRS sends the money. If you did not use refund transfer, you should get the second stimulus payment in the same way as the first payment.
Refund transfer is a terrible product -- not only is it overpriced, but putting a bank you don't know in between you and the IRS is always a bad idea. In 2020, it turns out to be a galactically bad idea.
It's not yet clear if there are other IRS mistakes not related to refund transfer.