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    Anonymous

      IMO there must be a method to the madness. I highly doubt an agency that relies so heavily on precision can act as randomly as many of us perceive. Last year I started a thread entitled “Is there a Pattern” under the username E (I actually went by Typhoon Dragon as well but it’s a long story). Anyway, as I’ve been reading the posts here and elsewhere I realized that in order to determine if there was a pattern at all I would first have to understand what happens during the life cycle of an individual tax return. What’s actually going on between point A (the receipt of our forms at the IRS) and point B (the receipt of our refunds in our accounts)? For people to file and be accepted on the same day yet receive their refunds days or even weeks apart suggests that some returns must take more steps between points A and B than others. Any insight on this would be greatly appreciated by me and may prove to be very useful to all of us.

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    Anonymous

      I just wanted to post this before I forgot. Not only may some returns take more steps between points A and B they may take different (slower or faster) routes. For example: Michelle and Maria are friends that are going to get their taxes done together. They work at the same place, make the same amount of money and everything on their returns will be identical except the names, and SSN’s. They walk into the tax preparation office together finish their taxes and walk out together. Now you would think they should get their refunds back the same day. But, Michelle’s return was sent to IRS server #1 (made up name) with a million returns already in it and Maria’s was sent to IRS server #2 (made up name) with only 100,000 returns in it. To make matters worse IRS server #1 happens to have a lot of complicated returns that need processed prior to checking Michelle’s return while server #2 has already processed Maria’s return. Needless to say, Maria gets her refund and Michelle remains in processing for a little while longer.

      I’m sorry, I know that I may not have all of the facts but the concept is right.

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