Residents can forget early tax refund

Residents that are expecting an early tax refund won’t be able to get it.

That’s because Congress has approved the installation of a software patch to upgrade all of the Internal Revenue Service computer systems.

Tammy Segura, co-owner of Tax Depot Incorporated in Luling, says this will hurt low income residents expecting a big return before February.

“A lot of our customers depend on the extra money so they file a rapid return, but now they’ll have to wait until mid February,” Segura said. “Even paper tax returns will sit on a shelf because the IRS won’t process anything until then.”

The IRS announced it will immediately begin the final reprogramming steps for its income-tax processing systems to  prepare  for the upcoming tax season following the passage of the Alternative Minimum Tax “patch.”

Segura says the tax-exemption amount changed.
“For married filing joint tax returns the exemption is $66,250 and for married filing separate tax returns the amount is $31,125,” she said. “For all other tax payers it is $44,350.”

An IRS spokesman says that they’re doing everything possible to quickly update the system for this major change and make the filing season as smooth as possible for everyone.

But Segura has concerns that her workload will increase because of the short deadline.

“Even though we won’t be able to start accepting tax returns until February, our deadline for filing the returns is still April 15,” she said. “There’s no filing extension.”