Filing a tax return this year took most households a few weeks between submission and refund. For anyone flagged as a possible identity theft victim, the timeline stretched toward two years instead. The National Taxpayer Advocate’s mid-year report to Congress, released in June, put a hard number on that wait for the first time in…

Roughly one in every ten individual returns filed with the Internal Revenue Service in 2026 never moved straight from submission to refund. An automated filter caught the return, froze it for additional review, and left the filer waiting on money that rent, groceries or a medical bill might already depend on. The National Taxpayer Advocate’s…

The Federal Trade Commission says it is sending a second round of Next-Gen refund checks totaling more than $13.5 million. The payment round is for people who cashed their first checks after losing money to a prize scheme operated by Next-Gen and related companies, according to the FTC’s current refund-program page. The listed total is…

Taxpayers checked refund status about 346 million times during the 2026 filing season, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s report to Congress. The report says use of the IRS’s Where’s My Refund? tool rose 9 percent from the prior year. The number counts status checks, not 346 million refunds or 346 million individual taxpayers. For…

The IRS says taxpayers used Individual Online Accounts nearly 121 million times during the 2026 filing season. The number comes from the National Taxpayer Advocate’s mid-year report, which describes how often people logged into the service. It is a usage figure, not a count of unique taxpayers, a refund total or a promise that every…

The IRS says it issues most refunds in fewer than 21 days after an e-filed current-year tax return is received. Direct deposit can make delivery faster than a paper check once the refund is approved, but the 21-day statement is not a guarantee. Some returns take longer because the agency needs to review information, verify…

The IRS says taxpayers can opt in to email notifications when the status of a federal tax refund changes. The feature is available through an IRS Individual Online Account. It is a status alert, not a promise that a refund has been approved, issued or sent. The actual status in the account and any IRS…

More than one million taxpayers did not receive refunds within the IRS’s normal processing time during the 2026 filing season, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate. The report says those taxpayers experienced an average wait of about five and a half weeks. The finding describes a completed filing-season performance issue; it does not mean every…

The National Taxpayer Advocate reports that the IRS issued 90.411 million current-year refunds during the 2026 filing season, with an average refund of $3,275. Those figures describe returns processed through the filing season, not a promised refund amount for a future return. A refund reflects a taxpayer’s particular withholding, payments, credits and final tax liability,…

Three false trust returns sought more than $1.1 million from the IRS, but one issued refund ultimately produced a restitution order of $410,117.44. A Maryland woman has been sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison after pleading guilty to theft of government funds. The case shows how a claimed refund amount, an…