Another government shutdown could delay your tax refund

WASHINGTON >> If you tend to procrastinate about filing your tax return, this is not the year to dawdle.

Usually everyone is fixated on April 15, when federal tax returns are typically due. But this tax season, Feb. 15 is the looming date on your calendar. That’s the day when the temporary funding ends for the federal agencies that were shut down for more than a month over President Trump’s demand for funding for a border wall. A failure to negotiate a border-security compromise by Feb. 15 could mean another shutdown, which would impact the IRS and the services it provides to taxpayers.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump said there’s less than a 50-50 chance a congressional committee would come up with an acceptable deal. This uncertainty couldn’t come at a worse time. Already people are experiencing some angst over major tax changes made by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Most of the changes in this legislation took effect in 2018 and will be reflected in federal tax returns filed this year.

The IRS said it expects to process more than 150 million individual returns for the 2018 tax year.

“I started doing my taxes and noticed the removal of personal exemptions,” one reader wrote. “How did I miss this news?”

There has been a lot of coverage of the overhaul of the tax code, but human nature is such that people often don’t focus on various issues — like their taxes — until a deadline forces them to face the facts.

Another reader, a retired widow with a dependent child, wrote: “I did my taxes using TurboTax, and with all the new changes, my tax refund was $196, compared with $662 last year. I didn’t change anything.”

There are a number of things that could result in a higher

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