I received my refund direct deposit only to find out I was short almost $1,000 of it. How did this happen?

[PandoraS · Accepted solution]

There are several factors that could change the amount of your tax refund - resulting in either a smaller refund than expected.

• Examples that could decrease your refund include math errors, mistakes, delinquent federal taxes, state taxes, child support, student loans or other delinquent federal nontax obligations, and withholding of the earned income tax credit (EITC) portion of your refund  if further review is needed.

One possibility is that you used the Refund Processing Service to pay your TurboTax Online fees. If you did, your TurboTax fee plus the additional processing fee is deducted from your federal tax refund.

Another possibility is that your refund was reduced by the government, either to correct a calculation error or through a refund offset. The IRS Where's My Refund tool will contain a disclaimer if your refund may have been offset. You'll get an explanatory letter from the government if your refund differs from what was on your filed return.  

[stevenT]

WE WERE SCAMMED TOO!!!!!!

This is HORRIBLE!!!! 

WE WERE PLANNING ON USING THAT MONEY FOR OUR FAMILY!!! THAT IS WHY WE WERE GETTING A REFUND. 

UPSET CUSTOMER!?

[gizmois1]

I have an additional part it never recieved a letter from the government but I am missing just under 1,000 called irs no offset related to my refund  and no collections related to my refund

[trishe97]

This has happened to us multiple years in a row. I thought it was related to my husbands child support so I never researched it but there is no way it could be related to that this year. I'm not sure what is going on but I'm glad to know it's not just me!

[Noisepilot]

My federal return was exactly $1,000 short. We filed for the return in March and today July 3rd we received an explanation from the IRS. Explanation was not clear but after doing some comparisons of the IRS data and the turbo tax return, we concluded that TurboTax said we had prepaid $1,000 and we actually had not. I don't know if I had entered information wrong in filing or this is an error that happens in TurboTax. This was the first time we've used TurboTax in a long time and maybe the last.

[tlcheese0]

I am missing nearly $4,000 off of my tax return. What is going on??

[Ebony A]

Please review this FAQ for some of the common reasons that result in your refund amount being less than expected @tlcheese0.