How to get your 2022 tax refund (if you haven’t already) (2024)

Waiting on your tax refund from last year? You may be doing so in vain.

More than 90% of tax refunds are issued within 21 days of filing. So if your check or direct deposit from the government remains outstanding nearly a year after the filing deadline, you’ll need to get more aggressive about pursuing your missing money.

Here’s how to find out what’s happened to your refund, uncover the problems that might be delaying its progress and speed up the process of receiving it.

How to check your refund status

As early as four days after filing your tax return electronically, you can check the status of your refund online through the IRS’s Where’s My Refund? tool or its mobile app IRS2Go. You’ll need to know your Social Security or taxpayer ID number, filing status and the exact refund amount stated on your return.

If you filed by paper, you’ll have to wait at least four weeks, potentially longer.

The IRS updates its digital tracker once a day and will show your refund being in one of three stages, either: return received, refund approved or refund sent. If you chose to receive your refund via direct deposit, you should see the date that it’ll be deposited as soon as it’s approved. Mailed refund checks can take a couple weeks to change status.

How to get in touch with the IRS if you haven’t received your refund

The IRS asks that you only try to call them for help with refund issues when their digital tracker tells you to, but CPA and TurboTax tax expert Lisa Greene-Lewis recommends reaching out regardless at this point.

“You should definitely give them a call and make sure your tax return has been received and processed,” said Greene-Lewis. “If they don’t have it for some reason, you’ll likely need to re-submit it or, if they do have it, you can find out why there is a delay and address whatever specific issues they have.”

Individuals can call the IRS at 800-829-1040, between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. your local time between Monday and Friday for assistance. Business should call 800-829-5500.

The later it gets during filing season, the longer you may have to wait a while to talk to an agent. If possible, phone during the later part of the week as the IRS reports Monday and Tuesday are the busiest days. Avoid the automated refund hotline, 800-829-1954, as it does not provide refund status updates for any year other than 2022.

What should you do if you still haven’t received your 2022 tax refund?

If you filed your paper return more than six months ago and the Where’s My Refund tool does not show that the IRS has received your information, the IRS advises that you resubmit it, preferably electronically.

Digital filers still waiting should review their mail for any letters from the IRS. Typically, the IRS prefers to communicate by post, meaning if there is an issue with your return that is delaying its processing, like an error or missing data, this is how you’ll likely find out.

If you haven’t received a notice, or you’ve corrected such mistakes months ago, you’ll need to call the IRS directly to uncover what the hold up is and get the process moving again.

Those who worked with a tax preparer should tap them for assistance as well. That’s because tax professionals can call a separate IRS help line to get status updates and address problems with their clients’ tax returns that those who self-file can’t access.

“I was able to get in touch with the IRS in a more straightforward way than my clients who were calling into the individual help line,” said Anna Goodman, a financial coach and registered tax preparer in San Francisco. “I don’t think the information I ultimately had access to was incredibly different, but it was nice for my clients to be able to fully hand me the burden of communicating with the IRS and reporting back.”

Common reasons why your refund is delayed or late

Returns filed on paper and mailed to the IRS are currently taking the agency at least six months to process. So if you filed for an extension and sent your completed tax return by the extended Oct. 17 deadline, the paper backlog might account for your delay.

Otherwise your wait likely comes down to the kinds of tax breaks you claimed or a mistake made when completing your return.

Certain tax credits receive more scrutiny

Tax returns that take the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Additional Child Tax Credit receive harsher scrutiny than those that don’t. Even if you were one of the first to file your return in January, the IRS cannot legally issue your refund before mid-February at the earliest. This is to give them extra time to uncover problems or fraud, which tend to be more prevalent on these types of returns.

Missing details call for back-and-forth communication

Perennial mistakes, such as leaving off signatures and Social Security numbers, could also be to blame. In these situations, the IRS will either return the tax form for you to amend and then re-submit or they will request the needed details so they can adjust it.

Suspected fraud and identity theft require investigation

Suspected identity theft and fraud can badly gum up the return process. You may face a gnarly mess if the IRS has already paid your refund out to a scammer who filed using your personal information.

To help prevent identity thieves, the IRS advises you to use strong passwords (not “password”) and multi-factor authentication for your personal financial accounts, in addition to security software with firewall and antivirus protection.

Your tax filing never made it to the IRS

Another possibility? The IRS simply never received your filing.

This issue is more commonplace for paper filers — your paper return might have been waylaid somewhere in the postal system. But it could be possible that you didn’t complete an electronic filing or that your tax preparer had a misunderstanding about who would actually submit the return.

You’ll want to confirm this with the IRS before sending a second 2022 tax return. Otherwise they may flag the second version as fraud, causing an even longer refund delay.