2024 Tax Refunds Unpaid 1-1-26

As of late in the 2024 fiscal year, the IRS had issued 117.6 million refunds to individuals. While most tax returns and associated refunds are processed quickly, an exact number of individuals who still have pending refunds is difficult to determine as people continue to file late and through extensions. 

Key statistics and reasons for delays include: 

Overall Processing: The IRS processed more than 161 million individual income tax returns during fiscal year 2024. This means the vast majority of refunds have been issued.

Specific Delays: A notable number of taxpayers faced specific, long-term delays for particular reasons:

Approximately 739,000 taxpayers were waiting for their refunds to be released due to claims of potentially frivolous credits.

Cases involving identity theft or fraud impacted around half a million taxpayers and could take up to two years to resolve in some instances during FY 2024.

Common Causes for Delays: Delays beyond the standard 21-day window for e-filers and direct deposit recipients can be caused by:

Errors or incompleteness on the tax return.

Returns flagged for potential identity theft or fraud.

Claims for certain credits like the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) or Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC), which require extra processing time.

Filing a paper return, which can take four weeks or more to process. 

Taxpayers waiting for their refund can check the status using the IRS's official Where's My Refund? tool on IRS.gov. 

As of late 2025, approximately 2.5 million individual 2024 tax returns remained unprocessed or were held in "suspense" for further review, potentially delaying those refunds. 

While the IRS processed over 98% of the more than 140 million individual returns received by the April 2025 deadline, several million taxpayers have faced delays due to the following: 

Returns in Suspense: Nearly 3.4 million returns were initially flagged for manual review due to error resolution, potential identity theft, or processing rejects.

Identity Theft Delays: Taxpayers in the identity theft victim assistance program face the longest delays, with cases taking an average of 602 days (nearly 20 months) to resolve as of April 2025.

Paper Filing: Those who filed paper returns typically wait significantly longer, with the IRS still processing some paper-filed 1040 forms received as recently as December 2025.

Business Backlogs: The IRS still faces a backlog of roughly 1.2 million Employee Retention Credit (ERC) claims as of late 2024, many of which remain pending through 2025. 

Taxpayers can track their specific status using the IRS Where’s My Refund? tool or the IRS2Go mobile app. 

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+us+taxpayers+have+not+received+their+2024+tax+refunds

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader