Do your estate return FIRST, then your personal return LATER to avoid a refund delay

[ajaxthedog89]

I learned a hard lesson today.  I was waiting over 8 weeks now for my $4500 fed tax refund, but all I could see when I checked on its status was “in process”.   Nobody working at the IRS so there is nobody to call or ask further what that meant or when it would be done.  I finally asked my congressman to get involved and they reported back to me today.  They said since I filed an amended return a few days after e-filing, my return was automatically kicked into a special review process, and of course the people who do that aren’t working because of COVID.  I am told they won’t be until July, which is the earliest I can expect my refund.

The sad thing is that the amendment only added $65 of dividend income and $24 of tax due to a K-1 from my Mom’s estate, which doing this for the first time I didn’t know was added to my return.  So my much larger refund is now held up because I did the right thing and reported this.  Now I know why people hate the IRS.

  Maybe they’ll give me interest for the 4.5 months they had my money.   Yeah, right…    Stimulus?  The form to check says “Status cannot be determined.”.  So outta luck there too, held up because of the return SNAFU..

[Carl]

This is exactly why I tell folks to not file any amended return until after their originally filed return has been processed, and they have physical possession of any refund they may be due on that originally filed return.

While an e-filed return is processed almost 100% by computer, an amended return must be processed by hand, by a human. This can take anywhere from 6 weeks, to "never" (literally!).

When an amended return is received and the originally filed return has not been completely processed, the human handling the amended return has no choice put to set it aside until after the originally filed return has completed processing.

Since the amended return is in an actual "hold" box, it may sit there for weeks, or even months before the human gets back to it; and thats "if" they get back to it.  To reduce the probability of that happening, you shoudl wait until the orginally filed return is processed and you have physically possession of any refund due on that original return.

[ajaxthedog89]

It'd be really nice if these "secret rules" were more publicized so that ordinary people could know and avoid this.  The whole point of TurboTax is to do our own taxes and not need a professional who would probably know this from experience.  This would be a nice tax tip, but one I have never seen before published anywhere.

[fanfare]

It's just common sense. 
Even if you've convinced yourself that you got it right, you can never know if your original tax return will be changed (corrected) by IRS.

The form 1040X says "original amount or as previously adjusted" by IRS.

After weeks working on an OR non-resident return, it just came back with two big errors.

Oregon revenue dept., unlike IRS, has not shut down.