As an AARP Tax Aide volunteer, I have passed the advanced test and now serve by doing quality review of other preparers’ tax returns to correct inadvertent errors.
I carefully prepare the Married Filing Jointly tax return for DH and myself every year, beginning with filling in (say) an “Estimated 2026 tax return” using the software for our 2025 tax return in April 2025. It’s impossible to be exact due to not being able to predict capital gains but I try to get as close as possible.
We pay Estimated Taxes four times a year. I was gratified to see that our 2025 payments were so close to the actual amount of tax that we were expecting an $86 tax refund, to be direct deposited into our joint checking account. Bulls-eye!
Imagine my shock when we received a direct payment from the IRS into our joint checking account of $5,364!
I immediately signed in to irs.gov to see if this was a mistake. Sure enough, it was reported as a refund by the IRS.
Gemini says that the IRS is getting refunds out quickly but might follow up with a letter a few weeks later.
So…
Place your bets, folks. Will we receive a letter in a few weeks telling us, OOPS! your refund was $86 after all, we have to take the money back, with interest of course? Or will it the money stay safely in our account, blessed by the IRS?
And if it does stay put…how did they calculate it? Where was my mistake?
Wendy
P.S. It’s a lot better to get an unexpectedly large refund than a letter saying that we owed that much.