I got an unexpected check in the mail today from the Dept of the Treasury. In an area near the bottom is what appears to be an explanation of what it is. It says:
(first 4 char of my last name) Austin 12/2019 Tax Refund 30
Int $ 52.56
Should I assume they have made an adjustment to my 2019 return and I will get an explanation at some point? Based on past interactions with the IRS, I know it is useless to call without having the name of the agent I need to talk with. I looked back at my return from that year and I wrote a significant check. This represents about 2/3 of that amount.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
You can pull an tax account transcript from the IRS.gov website. That will show you all the activity -- although you may not be able to decipher exactly WHY something is wrong, you might be able to see what happened.
Other than that, just wait for a notice to arrive and sit on the check until then.
Their "matching" system that generates the CP2000 notices won't be working on 2019 returns yet and even if it was, there would have been a proposed change before you got any money. Any changes almost certainly have to be related to the payments on record with them.
The main possibilities I can think of are:
1. a discrepancy between the payments you reported as paid to the IRS and the payments they have applied to your account -- either because you didn't report a payment (unlikely) or because they've misapplied a payment (more likely). Did you make any estimated
2. A discrepancy in the amount of withholding reported - possible, but unlikely
3. A math error on the return -- very unlikely if you used software to file
[/apolitical rant incoming]
The IRS is very broken right now. They have 5 million 2019 returns still to be processed and are 2-3 months behind in processing correspondence, which already took 60-90 days when things were normal. Their budget has been slashed, they haven't been able to hire new people to replace the retirees, their "very old computer" is literally from the Kennedy era. They've had to implement and then scrap numerous tax law changes every other year......and to make matters worse, Congress waits until the last goddamn minute to fucking do anything and then rushes through shitty laws that IRS has to figure out how to interpret and implement in less than a month before filing season starts. Everyone bitches about the IRS and how awful they are to deal with, but then cheers when their budget gets slashed -- maybe they could have enough people to answer the phone if they were allowed to hire more agents? Or if they weren't all tied up dealing with convoluted bullshit that shouldn't have anything to do with income taxes?
They were in bad shape pre-Covid and this has fucking finished them. It's a travesty.
[/end rant]
