Difficulty of care

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
February 21, 2025
3 replies
27 views

This is my first year filing difficulty of care. It has been 25 days and neither state or federal has moved from accepted. When you file this, does it take longer to get your return back?

KrisD15

Level 15

No, the Difficulty of Care payments should not delay your return, but all returns that claim the Earned Income Credit are taking a bit longer.

I assume your Difficulty of Care payments were used for the Earned Income Credit.

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Zsalyer9Author

Level 2

They were accepted on Jan 27th. Many got their taxes yesterday with the EIC. My taxes have never taken this long and the only thing different is the difficulty of care. It has me stressed and wondering if I missed something on my tax return and it flagged it or something.

Thank you

KrisD15

Level 15

Did you claim the Difficulty of Care payments as income?

If you did, did you claim all of the income?

Difficulty of Care payments are not taxed, they needn't be reported on your tax return HOWEVER if you want the income used to figure a credit, because the addition of the income increases the credit, you must claim ALL the income. So it's ALL or NONE.

If you entered the W-2 that reported the Difficulty of Care payments in TurboTax, the program would have used all if you selected to report it. Therefore there would be no error for that.

If your W-2 reported more than just Difficulty of Care payments, you may have needed to make an allocation.

We can try to determine if the payments were entered correctly, but of course without seeing your return and knowing the circumstances of your employment, it's pretty hard to say.

If the IRS has questions, they will send you a letter, otherwise all you can do is wait. Even if you realize there was an error on the original return, you can't do much until the original has finished being processed.

If this was the first year you received and are reporting this kind of income, your return may be delayed while the IRS matches your W-2 to the copy the state sent them.

Once the IRS computer system knows you receive this type of income, filing future returns should not be subject to this type of scrutiny.

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