If you had your tax preparation fees deducted from your refund, this means that your refund was sent to a third-party bank which is a temporary account in your name, subtracted the fees, and then transferred the rest of the refund to your regular bank and close the temporary account. This doesn’t just happen with TurboTax, but with any tax preparer where you have your fees deducted from your refund. It just so happens that TurboTax has the largest tax preparer.
This means that the IRS does not have your regular bank account information, they have the information for the temporary closed bank account. You had the opportunity up until October to go to the IRS website and give them your correct bank account information. Did you do this?
The IRS knows which banks are used for this service. If they see that you are using one of these banks for your refund, the IRS should either mail you a check or a debit card. In some cases, the IRS may attempt to send the refund to the temporary closed account. If this happens, the bank involved will either reject the deposit, or they may try and re-open your account and transfer the money to your regular account.
However you got the first stimulus payment, you should get the second stimulus payment by the same method.
I have never recommended using refund transfer to pay the TurboTax fees. It cost an extra $40 service charge and there are many cheaper ways to pay for TurboTax. It also puts an extra bank in between you and the IRS, which is never a good idea, and it just turns out to be an extra bad idea in 2020.
