H&R Block Software Glitch To Delay 600,000 U.S. Tax Refunds

mrquagmire sends this quote from a Reuters report: "Tax refunds for about 600,000 taxpayers claiming an education credit will be delayed, the Internal Revenue Service said on Wednesday, citing a software glitch at some tax-preparation companies, including industry leader H&R Block Inc. Refunds may be delayed four to six weeks from mid-February, likely not showing up until late March, the IRS said. ... On Tuesday, a Wal-Mart Stores Inc executive said shoppers had cashed about $2.7 billion in tax refund checks at its U.S. stores so far this year. At this point last year, that amount was about $4 billion. The IRS delayed the start of the tax filing season by eight days, to January 30, due to the enactment of tax law changes made to resolve the "fiscal cliff."

Comments

Enterprise Code

[ButchDeLoria]

Business quality meets government efficiency.

Re:Enterprise Code

[ButchDeLoria]

Sounds more like someone was posing as an employee to get your financial info.

Re:Enterprise Code

[demonlapin]

Not that it helps much in your case, but for those who find themselves in a similar situation, file for an extension (six months is automatic) and take a look at your previous year's tax return. Unless you have had a change in income or deductions, just be sure that your withheld tax on your W2 is equal to or greater than your actual tax liability the previous year. If it's not, write the IRS the largest check you can afford to write and send it in. You'll get back any overpayments when you file your return and in the meantime you've almost certainly avoided penalties and interest.

In short, it's your total tax that's really due on April 15. They don't care if the tax return itself comes in later. Hell, TurboTax's e-file screwed up my filing in 2010 and 2011, and it was June of 2012 before the IRS noticed that I hadn't filed a tax return for those years. No problem either time, because while I did owe a little money I had paid it on time each year - so the agency just asked me to fax them copies of the return within a few days. Easy as could be.

a software glitch, ha?

[roman_mir]

A software glitch?

I have a feeling that this software glitch is not really a bug, it's just when this function executed:

getTotalAvailableFederalBalance()

it returned 0, and somewhere along the line it triggered a condition known as: TreasuryIsBareException

Not surprising according to what they told me

[metalheadsunite]

I filed in late January and they told me at that time that the IRS wasn't accepting education credit submissions until late February and would delay refunds for about 2 months. Interesting that they now come out and say it was a software glitch.

Re:Not surprising according to what they told me

[dustbunny26]

Actually no, it wasn't an IRS software glitch. I work for the IRS and.... 1) the IRS is trying to catch people who are abusing the system (I know, cheaters, really?) so a lot of reprogramming was done. That's why the Form 8863 (Education Credit) processing was delayed until February 14. 2) H&R Block's software IS dropping two lines which caused the problems.

Re:Education credits . . .

[ButchDeLoria]

And so I told that ther teachin' lady, the only letters I need tuh know is 'U', 'S'. and 'A'.

I read that as...

[dAzED1]

I read that as "last year, people who shop at Walmart gave the government $4Billion in interest-free loans, by overpaying throughout the year."

I'm just funny that way....

Re:I read that as...

[Pathwalker]

Note that the IRS does pay (pretty good) interest, if they owe you enough.

I found that out one year when cleaning up the mess resulting from a forced stock sale (due to a takeover) and a broker that did backup withholding for the entire amount, ignoring the cost basis; but reported to me that a smaller number of shares had been sold, and that nothing had been deducted. After a few go-rounds I got the corrected paperwork in June, and filed a 1040X.

The extra check for the interest was a nice surprise.

Re:I read that as...

[tompaulco]

I also received interest one year due to a corrective filing worked out between me and my father to make me an independent so I could qualify for student loans, which I otherwise couldn't get because my family made too much money as defined by the student loan organizations, but not enough money to send me to school, as defined by the amount of money it costs to go to school.
Anyway, I ended up getting money back, plus interest. My father ended up having to pay more taxes, plus interest and penalties. Even including the penalties, the interest he had to pay was less than the interest the IRS paid me. And my refund was more than enough to compensate him for what he had to pay extra.

Re:Damn you Walmart!

[DougOtto]

The people that cash checks at Walmart, typically, have no bank. The businesses that Walmart is hurting with this service are the sleazeball check cashing folks. I'm not quite sure which way to feel about that.

Easily Handled

[Frankie70]

try
{
        avail = getTotalAvailableFederalBalance();
}
catch(TreasuryIsBareException e)
{
        printMoreMoney();
}

Re:Easily Handled

[TsuruchiBrian]

I like to stack all my parentheses at the beginning of the file and all the semi colons at the end of the file ke this:

(){(){}}

void foo

if bar != 0

bar++

return bar

;;

The code doesn't compile or even convey any semantic correctness, but it is more aesthetically pleasing.

Re:Easily Handled

[roman_mir]

Your analogy uses pizza, which is a product, not a currency, that's why it's not very clear, but you are correct, it does kind of work, people's real incomes are getting smaller and their real savings are getting smaller, so it's like slices of pizza are getting smaller.

Here is a clarification: everybody has to pay some money to get a slice of pizza. Government says: we must grow the economy and so we will issue more money.

Notice that the government cannot issue more pizza. The economy is the pizza, not the money. So the government issues more currency and gives it to somebody first, who now has more money just because government created it out of thin air. This first person can now buy more pizza with his money, so there is less pizza left for the rest of the people and they start fighting on who is going to eat, the pizza maker sees this and raises the price per slice.

The guy with more money can still get more pizza with his new currency, everybody else has to pay more to get their slice, so now they can get fewer slices.

The government grew the amount of money in the system and called it "the economy", while in reality pizza was the economy and what government did was redistribute the economy from everybody to some preferred guy.

Re:People still cash checks?

[Enderandrew]

People who owe banks money and thusly can't keep a checking account.

Or impatient people who want to spend their refund before receiving it.

Re:People still cash checks?

[flimflammer]

Anyone with garnishments levied against them?

H&R block is for suckers anyway.

[Anonymous Coward]

They charge ungodly amounts of money for starters. Me, Im single, I work one job, own one home, one car and everything in my life is very simple and so are my taxes but they insist on charging me 145 dollars to do my taxes. It used to be like 65 but every year it goes up and my taxes actually take like 15 minutes to do. Then they start sales pitching me on buying optional services and gurantees and so on on top of 145.

So I started doing my taxes online for free through simple google searches for a couple years and never had a problem.

Hell in my community I also found out a lot of people volunteer to do peoples taxes for free. My neighbor was a VP for us bank in the equipment leasing department till he retired and his wife worked for the irs and now they volunteer at the library 3 days a week to do peoples taxes for them for free, all you have to do is show up. And others qualified in the money field also volunteer their time as well. Hell, half my county gets theirs done free at the library this way.

Look at alternatives to expensive companies like this. Hell local tax attorneys charge small fees to do personal taxes.

Re:H&R block is for suckers anyway.

[EmagGeek]

My wife and I have a somewhat complex tax situation. We both have 1099 income, and we have three rental properties between us - one jointly owned, and the other two are pre-marital property. I also have my regular W2 income from the business I own.

H&R Block wanted $5000 to do our taxes and the taxes for my corp, because they were "very complex and intricate and required special attention of a whole team of tax professionals," when our regular CPA whom we've used for years is $650.

These "professional" tax preparers are nothing more than a bunch of part-time yahoos who can file a form with the IRS to become "certified" tax preparers. I prefer to hire someone who does taxes and accounting for a living, every day, all year. Besides, it's cheaper.

Misleading

[letherial]

First, this is old news, way old news....its done and gone
Second, it was a IRS software glitch, that effected every education form...the article title tries to imply that its H&R block and thats just misleading.

Re:People still cash checks?

[tibit]

That's somewhat bigoted. If you have an excessive amount of bounced payments or overdraft fees, a bank may decide to close your account and not let you reopen it. Apparently banks share this information with other banks, so that once you're blacklisted, you can't have a checking account for a few years.

Re:Damn you Walmart!

[TsuruchiBrian]

I feel like $3-$6 is quite reasonable. That's about how much an ATM charges to withdraw money. I don't think walmart is actually as evil as people think. There are companies whose success I feel is much more detrimental to the community as a whole, particularly those which have no bid contracts with the government.

Re:Read this as tongue in cheek:

[tompaulco]

To elaborate on what the rude anonymous coward said, you would have had to pay 25% on the dollars that put you over the bracket, but 15% on all the ones under that bracket. In your case, it sounds like you would have paid 25% on 1 or possibly zero dollars.

Re:People still cash checks?

[ArhcAngel]

Yep...Had a coworker quit his associate degree course at DeVry to take the job with us. Six months later he starts getting debt repayment notices for the school. By his reasoning he didn't owe any money since he didn't finish taking the classes (Yes he really believed this) so another six months go by and one day he just starts cussing and screaming obscenities. His check was less than $20! It was a very good day...he was a dick.


Many who cash their checks this way are illegals who do not have a checking account for fear of it leading the INS to their door. But I doubt this would effect them as they probably don't file taxes either.

Re:Damn you Walmart!

[demonlapin]

Wal-Mart is only considered evil by a few hardcore leftists and a bunch of people who wouldn't be caught dead in there even if it paid high wages to its employees. Actual poor people love Wal-Mart, because it's so much less expensive and so much nicer in terms of quality and selection than the stores that preceded it.