I got an IRS refund check today, even though I already paid my tax bill

May 2, 2016 4:59 PM

In my mail today was a check from the IRS, made out to myself and my wife, for exactly $4000. The check and additional literature in the envelope said it was our tax refund. The thing is, we owed money this year, and I paid it via electronic check when I filed; the exact amount due came out of my checking account the next day. So what should I do with this thing?
posted by aaronetc to Law & Government (18 answers total)

As someone who regularly gets a refund, it seems weird to me that it came in the form of a check in the mail. Nowadays it's trivial to have your refund direct deposited. I don't recall ever getting a check in the mail, in close to 15 years of doing taxes, going back to around 2001 or so. Even when I used to fill out paper forms and mail them in.

I also know that the IRS sure as hell isn't going to just spontaneously send you a check for money owed absent tax documents that inform them they owe you a refund.

Did someone else do your tax prep? Could you call them and ask if maybe there was a mistake? I've also had reasonable enough luck calling the IRS in the past.

This feels fishy to me and I wouldn't deposit the check right away. I'm leaning more to bizarre mixup rather than scam, but none of this is how getting a tax refund works, even on top of the fact that you weren't supposed to get one.
posted by Sara C. at 5:07 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: I do all our tax prep myself in Turbotax, and I haven't sent or received a paper check in more than a decade.
posted by aaronetc at 5:16 PM on May 2, 2016

Exact thing happened to me. It took two weeks for the letter to come from the IRS that explained the check. It wasn't a scam.

I was about to send the IRS a request for the transcript, as mentioned here
posted by cameradv at 5:16 PM on May 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

Call the IRS and ask. The couple times I've had to deal with them over maybe-scary things, they were super-nice and very helpful and not at all scary.
posted by rtha at 5:18 PM on May 2, 2016 [15 favorites]

Allow me to counter with my experience: for various reasons, I filed by snail mail around 4 years ago and I definitely received a check from the IRS for my refund, so they do legitimately send out refund checks. However, if you filed electronically, it'd definitely be a good idea to call their hotline and ask them what's up.
posted by Aleyn at 5:18 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Yeah, this just happened to us. It was preceded (by a couple days) by a letter from the IRS explaining that there had been an error and we were due a bigger refund than we thought... and then they mailed us a check. Possibly you've missed the earlier letter, or possibly it got delayed and will come to you soon?
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:25 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

2nding to just call them. As crazy as it sounds, their customer service is actually really good.
posted by ananci at 5:27 PM on May 2, 2016 [4 favorites]

I agree with calling the IRS. As is often repeated here, they have some of the best customer service of any government agency.

For what it's worth, I can personally verify the IRS will send you a check refund if you incorrectly file your taxes, even through e-file. In my case, it wasn't $4,000 - it was something like a $15 refund. I e-filed a return with a payment of some equivalent amount. I had accidentally mistyped a digit on one of my tax forms. The IRS noticed the error, corrected my return, and sent me a refund check all in the course of a couple weeks.
posted by saeculorum at 5:27 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nthing that you should call and ask but in my experience it seems like the IRS is over there doing your taxes for you anyway regardless of what you submit. If you were off in either direction they let you know. I get corrections sometimes like "BTW you shorted us $200 pls pay plus late fee" and my accountant confirmed that this is what happened.
posted by bleep at 5:27 PM on May 2, 2016

I should also say, the explanatory letter we got from the IRS came in an ordinary-looking white business envelope, so would have been easy to mistake for junk mail. But the letter included the actual salary, withholding, etc numbers from our actual tax return... it wasn't a fakey scam thing.
posted by LobsterMitten at 5:28 PM on May 2, 2016

I got a mystery check from the IRS a while back; it turned out to be from a years-earlier return where I'd sent them a certain amount, my math was wrong, and also some stranger filed a fraudulent return for a refund.

Anyway, it took a few months before they fully explained the situation, but that's in part because I mailed them back the check instead of calling to ask them what the deal was. So they actually called me! It's much faster if you call them instead.
posted by SMPA at 5:48 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

It sounds like you forgot to take some refundable tax credits for the amount to be an even $4000. Do you have kids?
posted by Jacqueline at 6:44 PM on May 2, 2016 [2 favorites]

As a counter point, I have also received a refund check from the IRS that was sent to me in error. I called them and asked what the deal was. Less than a week later I had another letter requesting I mail the check back.

So, yes, call them.
posted by rhapsodie at 6:52 PM on May 2, 2016

From the IRS: A Federal tax refund is basically a refund from the IRS because you paid more in taxes than you owed for the year. This can happen if too much money is withheld from your paychecks (called withholding tax) and it adds up to more than your total tax liability for the year. You can control your tax refund amount by managing your withholding tax properly. In general, the more money that is withheld from your wages throughout the year, the greater your tax refund may be because you’ve essentially overpaid the IRS.

Did you pay estimated taxes last year? Are your withholdings different than you thoughts? Did you have A LOT of money withheld?

Also, I apparently am the only person who intentionally does this...but I get a paper check as my refund. In fact, I just got mine today too! My understanding is that you specifically have to ask to have your refund deposited into your bank account otherwise you get the paper check.
posted by Toddles at 6:53 PM on May 2, 2016 [1 favorite]

Nth-ing that calling them first is the best thing to do, their phone service is very good. But for what it's worth, I've never received any "additional literature" with my refund check, it's always just the check itself. The check would be from "United States Treasury", there's a big Statue of Liberty on the left, and a QR code in the top-right corner.
posted by equalpants at 10:04 PM on May 2, 2016

...and you know, now having posted that, I'm doubting myself--maybe there is a little pamphlet that comes with it and I've just edited it out of my memories. Sorry to be unhelpful, hope the check description helps at least.
posted by equalpants at 10:06 PM on May 2, 2016

Is it possible you made an estimated payment that you forgot about? We just spent a couple hours this afternoon feeling like we drew the best Community Chest card in Monopoly before my husband realized we'd made an estimated payment last April and both promptly forgot it ever happened.
posted by town of cats at 11:49 PM on May 2, 2016

Response by poster: Nope -- any estimated payment that got overlooked would've been in multiples of $700, which is the quarterly estimated payment my wife made last year. So even if she accidentally double-sent one (or four), it wouldn't get to $4000.

The roundness of that number is one of the things that made me suspicious in the first place. The only place that number occurs in my return is in the instructions for calculating standard deductions ($4,000 times the number of claimed household members). We have no dependents, so that line says $8,000. So maybe the IRS discovered I have a kid that I don't know about? Seems unlikely. At any rate, I'm seeing independent sources saying an explanation often arrives 1-2 weeks after the check, and I'm swamped with the end of my semester for that long anyway, so I will plan to call them mid-month.
posted by aaronetc at 1:59 PM on May 3, 2016