The IRS has been winding down paper refund checks for individual taxpayers under an executive order, and the change caught many households short this spring. By March 9, House Democrats said, more than 830,000 taxpayers had been told their refunds were on hold.

The paper-check phase-out began on September 30, 2025, according to the IRS announcement issued with the Treasury Department. It follows Executive Order 14247, which the IRS says applies “to the extent permitted by law.”

What the IRS said about paper checks

The IRS called the change the first step in a broader move to electronic payments. In the 2025 filing season it issued more than 93.5 million refunds to individual filers, and about 93 percent were paid by direct deposit. Those numbers show how small the paper group already was, though it still amounted to millions of people.

For people without bank accounts, the agency said options such as prepaid debit cards, digital wallets or limited exceptions would be available. Its advice to everyone else was to know their banking information, or consider opening a free or low-cost account.

The practical question is for people who file on paper or have no bank account on file. A refund they expected by check may be sitting on hold until they act on an IRS notice. Anyone who has not seen a notice can check the refund status screen before assuming the check is lost.

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The same announcement told taxpayers to keep filing the way they always had. It promised detailed guidance for 2025 returns before the 2026 filing season began. No IRS official is quoted in the release.

Where the 830,000 figure comes from

The number is not a count of paper checks that went out. It comes from a March 9 letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent from Representatives Danny Davis of Illinois and Terri Sewell of Alabama, the Democratic leaders on two Ways and Means subcommittees. Their press release said more than 830,000 taxpayers had received IRS notices that their refunds were delayed so far this season.

The refunds were held because those taxpayers had not given the IRS required banking information. The lawmakers said some delays ran longer than two months, and that after calling IRS phone lines they found no simple way to get a paper check released right away. They said it takes at least 10 weeks.

Those are the Democrats’ claims, and the IRS has its own timing. The count also kept climbing. A tax news site reports that, at a June 4 Ways and Means hearing, Davis cited IRS data showing about 3.4 million taxpayers had received the delayed-refund notices as of April 18.

What a CP53E notice asks a taxpayer to do

The notice at the center of this is called CP53E. According to the IRS’s CP53E page, it goes out when a return shows a refund but the bank information is invalid, missing or rejected. It also goes out when the IRS corrects a balance-due return so that it now shows a refund.

The deadline is short. A taxpayer has 30 days from the date on the notice to sign in to an IRS online account and add or update a bank account, and there is only one chance to do it. IRS employees cannot change bank information over the phone.

The page says that anyone who does not respond will be sent a paper check after 6 weeks. It does not say how long the check then takes to arrive. Refunds can also be reduced if the taxpayer owes other debts.

How to find a refund that never showed up

The IRS tells taxpayers to use its refund status page first. A refund check should arrive within 4 weeks of the date the IRS issues it, and a taxpayer whose check was lost or stolen can ask for a refund trace.

The trace runs through Form 3911, the Taxpayer Statement Regarding Refund, or a phone call. People who are single or file as head of household or married filing separately can call 800-829-1954. Married couples filing jointly call 800-829-1040 or send the form.

A check that was never cashed is treated differently. The IRS says an uncashed check under a year old is cancelled and replaced, while an older one is reissued with a CP32 notice. A check that was cashed by someone else goes through a claim with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which the page says can take up to 6 weeks.

What stays unsettled

The executive order is still in force, and the IRS has not said the phase-out is over. Nor did the IRS release say paper checks would stop altogether, since it pointed to limited exceptions. How many refunds were still sent by paper this season is a number the IRS has not published.

For households, the plain lesson is that a refund by mail is no longer the default. Anyone who files again next year can reduce the risk by giving the IRS a bank account on the return, and by keeping any IRS notice where it will not be lost in a pile of mail.

Still waiting on a refund that was supposed to come by check?

The 30-day window on a CP53E notice is easy to miss, and the single chance to add a bank account is easy to waste. A refund can sit for weeks while a household guesses whether it was mailed, held or lost.

The IRS Refund Recovery Kit walks through the refund-trace steps (Form 3911) and explains how to read the notice that put a refund on hold. It also includes a notice decoder and a refund status tracker spreadsheet, so each call and each date stays in one place.

Get the Form 3911 refund-trace steps and a status tracker for a check that never came →

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This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.