Iowa tax refunds no longer delayed

About 90 percent of Iowans expecting state tax refunds for individual incomes tax should have them by now, the Iowa Department of Revenue reports.

This is a big improvement from March, when the amount of refunds issued was less than half what had been issued at the same time in 2016. The delay was attributed to additional security procedures to cut tax fraud.

The agency had completed 1.04 million refunds worth $669.4 million through May 27, compared to 1.01 million refunds worth nearly $632 million by May 26, 2016, said Nicole Watson, Revenue Department spokeswoman. The average Iowa individual income tax refund so far this year is $644, the agency reported.

Two months earlier, on March 24, Iowa had issued $141.8 million in income tax refunds on 2016 returns, down 58 percent from the $340.2 million in refunds the state had issued at this time last year.

The lag was due in part to a new federal law requiring the Internal Revenue Service to hold refunds until Feb. 15 for people who claim the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Additional Child Tax Credit. This allows the IRS to do additional review of these returns, which are vulnerable to fraud.

Iowa implemented anti-fraud procedures last year after receiving more than 10,000 bogus tax returns in 2015. The agency halted $11.6 million in fake refunds that year, spending $834,969 on the efforts. Similar fraud occurred across the country, causing many states to warn taxpayers their 2016 refunds would be later than in past years.

The Revenue Department increased the number of people processing tax returns to try to speed up the process, Watson said.

Iowans, unhappy about the unexpected wait, took to the Revenue Department's Facebook page with comments and critical reviews. Some of the saltier comments caused the agency to remove the review section in late March, Watson said.

'We were receiving a lot of comments with swear words and things that were not appropriate,” she said. 'Instead of monitoring those comments, we took that section off.”

Still waiting for your refund? Iowa's Where's My Refund website at idr.iowa.gov/wheresmyrefund/ allows users to plug in their Social Security number and track their refund.

l Comments: (319) 339-3157; erin.jordan@thegazette.com