Tax season is officially over, all the refunds should have been submitted and extensions applied for, and now the waiting game begins to see when those who did their due diligence with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will get paid. The good news is that most people will not have to wait too long to get the money they are owed into their bank account, as the earliest refunds could start going out as early as April 27.
This does not mean you should get your hopes up just yet, as only those who filed electronically and had very simple tax returns will be able to get their money back that quickly. Just as a word of caution, if you sent your return via physical mail, it will have taken a few weeks just to make it to the desk of someone who can process it, so even if you sent it before the deadline, it will be a while before you see any money in your account.
In fact, this is compounded if you wish your payment to be delivered to your home by mail, according to IRS sources “Those [checks] sent by mail can take between 4 and 8 weeks.”
How long does it really take for the IRS to send your tax return
Let us start simple, for error-free electronic returns the maximum time it should take for the IRS to process your return is 21 days, although some have been able to be processed in about 12. But this is assuming a lot, a simple tax return is getting rarer each year as most people have obligations and qualify for different tax credits, some of which need to be reviewed to see if they apply to the filer in question.
If there is a mistake in your tax return or there needs to be some extra documentation provided to sustain a claim for a credit or an exemption, the process can extend way past the official 21 day tagline, and it can be months before your refund is fully processed. One reason for this is that, again according to the IRS source, “The IRS notifies by mail if it requires additional documentation” which makes the process take a lot longer.
Another common reason for delays even in fairly simple returns is that many are filed with incomplete personal information or the wrong method of payment, like an incorrect bank account or address. Sometimes the problem is not even with the taxpayer, it is with the bank itself, but it still falls on the taxpayer to solve it.
For those who are concerned about the timeline of their refund and wish to be appraised of the status, the IRS offers the “Where’s My Refund?” tool. This free tool allows electronic filers to check the status of their refund and their tax return, which means that they will be able to see if anything has gone awry a bit quicker. It is available online and in the IRS2Go app, updating every 24 hours, and although it takes a bit of time to see your filing uploaded to the system, those who filed before April 15 and chose direct deposit can check their status as early as April 23, 2025.
For those that are a bit more impatient and want an estimated timeline, tax returns submitted electronically on April 1, 2025 will likely see their refunds being issued by April 22, those who filed on April 10 will have to wait until April 25 if processing is expedited, though the official deadline would be May 1 and tax returns filed on April 15, especially as the deadline approaches, may see refunds processed as late as May 6. More complex filings or those submitted right before the cutoff may face additional delays extending into May.