Will The Government Shutdown Affect Your Tax Refund?

Looking to get your tax refund as early as you can this year? The government shutdown could change that plan.

It's only been a couple of days, but people are already getting nervous about the affect the government shutdown will have on their tax refund.

Like many government agencies, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has had to furlough many of it's employees.

According to CNN, they are keeping over 35,000 employees on as "essential personnel"...that's about 43% of workers. But they won't all be working on getting you your refund money.

Most of the folks kept working will be processing electronic returns, testing upcoming filing year programs and reviewing computer operations to prevent the loss of data.

Sadly return examinations and issuing refunds are NOT on the to-do list during the shutdown.

The good news however is that this will still probably NOT have any impact on your refund.

Why?

Well the government had already announced that they wouldn't be accepting tax refunds until January 29th, which means there's still about a week before they would even take a look at tax return to send a check out.

So unless this government shutdown drags on for weeks and weeks, most people will not see a halt in refunds owed to them.

Just make sure you file as soon as you can to ensure the speediest refund arrival!