How Long Does It Take To Receive A Tax Refund
How long does it take to receive a tax refund?
When April 15 rolls around next year and you don’t owe the government any money, the boys and girls in Washington might be paying you. So how long does it take to receive a tax refund? Taking a look at all of the possible means of sending out your tax information and getting back a check, we might just be able to surmise an answer to the question, “How long does it take to receive tax refund?”
One way people file now-a-days is on the internet. There are even free programs that allow one to figure out their taxes owed, compute deductions, and even file for extensions. For our purposes, we are going to assume you are not filing for an extension, as you would like to get your money back from the government as soon as humanly possible.
On a website dedicated to tax filing, you will be prompted to either e-file, which means send the government your forms via the internet, or print out the documents and send them in the post (snail mail, remember it?). Assuming you are able to finish in one sitting, and assuming you are doing your taxes the week before taxes are due, you are going to have to wait three days for the postal service to deliver your paper package of tax stuff.
The internet method is not as yet a reliable means for shipping taxes, as sometimes the servers at the IRS will reject the software used to send it. If you do go this route, and by this point maybe somebody at the Internal Revenue Service will have figured out how to use email and the internet properly, the basic turn-around time for your taxes to be finished is six weeks if you file on time. If you filed and snail-mailed it in, your turn around time is between eight and ten weeks on average. Either way, this is not the time period in which you can expect your money back, but the time period for the IRS to finish checking to see if you answered everything they wanted you to. If you did, then god speed, and the check will be cut two weeks after that.
All told, from a tax work-up the week before taxes are due, to sending and waiting for your forms to be sorted at the Internal Revenue Service, between seven and eleven weeks are required before the tax assessor knows if you will be getting money back. If you are, then your estimated wait period is between nine and thirteen weeks. Let’s be realistic here, and know that you sent your taxes in on tax day itself, or the day before, and the office is swamped with last-minute paperwork senders. In that case, your turn-around gets pushed back one month, and now you are talking about a wait of between three and five months for the answer to, ” how long does it take to receive tax refund back?” Best of luck, and maybe don’t wait so long to start preparing this year for tax season.
