Personal Tax News

Taxpayers May Direct Refund To Three Accounts

Yes, it is good to have the flexibility of sending your tax refunds to three accounts, and you may use it to defeat your spending habits so you can save more for retirement. However, it is a bit over-engineering for me.

By the way, the split-refund function is not implemented in major tax softwares like TurnoTax and H&R Block's TaxCut.

For the first time, taxpayers can arrange to have their refunds deposited in up to three accounts, including an individual retirement account. The IRS has offered direct deposit for years, but it was limited to one account. Most taxpayers had their refunds deposited into checking. "When you put money into a checking account," says U.S. Treasurer Anna Escobedo Cabral, "sometimes, it disappears very quickly." Cabral, who has tried to promote financial literacy, hopes the initiative will encourage more Americans to save their refunds. Taxpayers can choose to have their refunds deposited not only into IRAs but also into health savings accounts and education savings accounts.

If you're really serious about saving, you can have your entire refund deposited in an IRA. But if you need some of the money to pay bills, you can have part of the refund deposited in your checking account. Alternatively, you could deposit enough of the money into your checking account to meet immediate needs, deposit another portion into a savings account and funnel the rest to an IRA. The deposits don't have to be the same amounts, the IRS says.

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Unfortunately, millions of taxpayers who use tax software won't be able to take advantage of the split-refund option — at least not this year. TurboTax and H&R Block, the two largest providers of tax software, don't offer the split-refund option in any of their programs. The change came too late for H&R Block to include it in its TaxCut programs, spokeswoman Denise Sposato says. But taxpayers who have their returns prepared at any of H&R Block's branch offices will be able to split their refunds, she says.