IRS Daily Processing Versus Weekly Processing of Tax Refunds

The IRS processes some taxpayers tax refunds on a weekly basis and some on a daily basis. The weekly processed taxpayers accounts are because the taxpayer met 2 or more disqualifiers. IRS Daily Processing Versus Weekly Processing of Tax Refunds describe by the US Treasury:

At the end of Calendar Year 2011, the IRS had identified more than 122 million taxpayer accounts for daily processing and more than 148 million taxpayer accounts for weekly processing.  Through April 30, 2012, the IRS had successfully processed 71 million individual tax returns through daily tax return processing.

The IRS’s planning efforts reduced the risk associated with the daily processing of individual tax returns.  In addition, the IRS accurately identified tax accounts for daily processing.

The IRS analyzed tax account transactions and other conditions that affect tax return processing and identified those that would require additional time to ensure tax returns were processed correctly.  These transactions are referred to as disqualifiers.  Tax accounts that contain one or more disqualifiers will continue to be processed weekly.

Read the rest of this 2012 article.

You may ask “What are the disqualifiers that would make my account weekly processed?” The answers is there are many disqualifiers, but here are a few.

  • Taxpayer accounts that went through the Electronic Fraud Detection System.

  • Taxpayer accounts reviewed by the Accounts Management Taxpayer Assurance Program.

  • Taxpayer accounts that could receive a notice.

  • Taxpayer accounts that went through a pre-refund examination program.

The are the reasons that you might be weekly processed by the IRS; you have dealt with identity theft or fraud, have a tax lien(owe an institution money), suspected of suspicious filing, pr are picked for your tax refund to be randomly examined. There are other disqualifiers but these are the most common.

Am I daily or Weekly Processed by the IRS?

The best way to find out whether you are weekly or daily is to look at your prior year transcript(unless something drastically changed between this year and that year.)  If you previously received your tax refund on a Wednesday, then you would be weekly. If it was on a Friday, then you were daily processed.

Once you know whether you are daily or weekly processed by the IRS, you can use the IRS Processing Chart to better estimate when you will receive your tax refund. This is a more complicated chart and only for more advanced users. If you find this chart to be too complicated, please refer to our 2019 Refund Schedule.