How COVID-19 Is Changing the Way Families Save for College Costs
<strong>Ryan Ermey</strong>: With the fall semester fast approaching, the COVID-19 pandemic has cast a shadow of uncertainty over higher education. Kevin Walker of CollegeFinance.com joins us for a discussion of how the landscape has changed for colleges, students, and parents alike in our main segment. On today's show, Sandy and I talk tax refund delays and answer reader mail about how to pay for a new home in retirement. That's all ahead on this episode of Your Money's Worth. Stick around.
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<strong>Ryan Ermey</strong>: Welcome to Your Money's Worth. I'm Kiplinger's associate editor Ryan Ermey joined as always by senior editor Sandy Block. And we're talking tax refunds here in the first segment, Sandy. My question to you to kick things off is did you get your refund?
<strong>Sandy Block</strong>: I owed the IRS. So to me, this is a nice problem to have. But here's the deal, the deadline for filing your 2019 tax return, as we mentioned many times, was last week. But some people who filed a long time ago still haven't gotten their refunds and we're not just talking about people who filed paper returns. If you file a paper return, it's kind of baked in the cake that you're going to get your refund late. But some people who filed electronically are also still waiting for their refunds -- and obviously they're very annoyed about that. And it's a little perplexing because when you file for your tax return and ask for a direct deposit electronic refund, that should be done electronically. So the fact that a lot of IRS people have been out because of the pandemic doesn't necessarily explain why the good people who e-filed and arranged for direct deposit of their tax refunds have not seen their money.
<strong>Sandy Block</strong>: So hat tip to Howard Gleckman of the Tax Policy Center for writing about this recently. He had basically gave two reasons. One is that sometimes there is a problem with your tax return. Maybe it's a small thing, but it might need a human sign off. And those humans are very, very busy right now-
<strong>Ryan Ermey</strong>: Right, and there's fewer of them.
<strong>Sandy Block</strong>: Right. I think the IRS has staffed back up, but that's still-
<strong>Ryan Ermey</strong>: What do I know.
<strong>Sandy Block</strong>: No, you know a lot. But there's still a backlog. Even if they're fully staffed now, they weren't at full staff a couple months ago. So that's one, and the other -- this is kind of interesting because we've talked so much on this show about stimulus checks and will talk about them again if there are more -- is that both the refunds and the stimulus payments were distributed by Treasury's Bureau of Fiscal Service.
