Many factors could cause a smaller refund or an unexpected tax owed. Below are some common culprits:
To check for all of these potential factors and more, may I recommend reviewing your prior year return, line-by-line, and comparing it to this year's forms? This will help you determine the changes between 2018 and 2019.
Here's how to look at your current year return forms:
How come I owe the state so much and my federal return is 300 lower then last year? Haven’t been getting paychecks for 7 months being a server at a restaurant because they said we were paying more taxes on our checks so we should get a bigger return ..
Here are some things that could have led to a smaller refund or you owing a tax bill.
Have you input all of your tax documents? Many tax documents are not required to be issued until January 31.
In addition, here are some of the more common issues that will affect your refund from one year to the next.
You may also want to review this.
Is everything been entered correctly? You can view the tax return to see what has been entered.