2021 Tax Filing Begins Feb. 12

[ATSMAN]

2021 tax filing season begins Feb. 12; IRS outlines steps to speed refunds during pandemic
WASHINGTON ― The Internal Revenue Service announced that the nation's tax season will start on Friday, Feb. 12, 2021, when the tax agency will begin accepting and processing 2020 tax year returns.
The Feb. 12 start date for individual tax return filers allows the IRS time to do additional programming and testing of IRS systems following the Dec. 27 tax law changes that provided a second round of Economic Impact Payments and other benefits.

[Rapid Robert]

Interesting contrast to tax season 2018, which began Jan 29th, even though TCJA was passed into law late in December that tax year as well, and was clearly more complicated in terms of tax form filing than last month's legislation. [edit: TCJA mostly affected tax year 2018, not 2017] They falsely claim that this will not further delay various refunds (EITC and ACTC cannot by law be issued before mid-February, but other refunds including Recovery Rebate Credits are not subject to this limit),

Last year's filing season opened Jan 27th, 2020.

This year: "The IRS anticipates a first week of March refund for many EITC and ACTC taxpayers if they file electronically with direct deposit and there are no issues with their tax returns. This would be the same experience for taxpayers if the filing season opened in late January." (Note that "first week of March" is deliberately vague, it could be as late as March 5th).

Back in 2018, the IRS said, "The IRS expects the earliest EITC/ACTC related refunds to be available in taxpayer bank accounts or on debit cards starting on Feb. 27, 2018"

My point is, OK maybe they have more delays this year, but they should not falsely claim that it isn't affecting the speed of refunds. It is.

[Lion]

What year was it that e-filing opened not much late; however, Schedule A was not available as well as several other common items. So, many tax payers were NOT able to file until some weeks after e-filing opened.

[ATSMAN]

I will be warning my clients to expect some delay in refunds initially until IRS gets up to speed. I have one client that depends on the refund (EITC and CTC) to pay their property tax bill and usually get their return done on the day it starts!