All,
Really? This is a mess and I have a bunch of refund just sitting now because of a software problem. Ugh...
The forms may have been requested because the state might have wanted verification of tax withheld. This is sometimes done as a fraud prevention measure.
Interesting. I will report my findings when I get them from OR.
Thought about this a bit. It would seem that the federal IRS has electronic versions of all the income e.g. W-2 and 1099s. They do an income compare between TT and their database and then issue you a refund or you make a payment. The question is do the states have access to the income database also? I guess I won the lottery to get selected? Maybe the punch cards were damaged in transit?
States also receive an electronic copy of your forms. The issue for the state is to make sure the refund based on withholding goes to the person who is on the form. By having you provide the actual forms it assures them that the return is not fraudulent and the refund is actually going to the filer who had the tax withheld.
Makes sense. I called the Oregon Revenue Department after about 8 weeks after repeatedly checking their website. The person on the phone said that they had no information beyond "your return is under review." They said I would get a letter sometime with further instructions. Being a very old programmer, I would have provided a bit more information on the webpage, e.g. "You are not being audited, but we need gather additional information beyond what TT provided to verify the authenticity of the return." That probably is way too much info, but I felt my return was at the bottom of an electronic bitbucket.