Taxes 2022: How to get your refund as quickly as possible

Geltrude & Company's Daniel Geltrude joins Yahoo Finance’s All Markets Summit Extra: Tax Time to discuss how to speed up the process of getting your tax return back from the IRS.

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AKIKO FUJITA: Sponsored by Straight Talk Wireless. We are back with Geltrude & Company founder Dan Geltrude. Dan, we've got, what, six days left to go until those taxes are due? What's the number one question you've been getting?

DAVID GELTRUDE: The number one question by far is, when am I getting my refund? Of course, any time people know that they're getting a refund, they want that money as quickly as possible. So right now, the IRS has actually been pretty good this year. And for the most part, getting refunds has been taking place within about 21 days, about three weeks for those refunds to be issued. So that's really positive.

But you know, if you want to make sure that you're going to be getting your refund as quickly as possible, there are a few things that you can do. First, you should be filing your tax return electronically. That speeds up the process tremendously, because it's basically instantaneously that you hit the button and your tax return is received by the IRS.

The second thing is that you want to notate on your tax return that you want direct deposit. Meaning that your refund is going to be deposited directly into your bank account. Now, doing those things will significantly speed up the amount of time to get your money-- emphasize that, your money. Now, to answer the question of, where's my refund?

There is actually a portal on the IRS' website, IRS.gov, called Where's My Refund. So you can go into that 24 hours after your tax return has been received-- and let's assume you file electronically-- now, the next day, the IRS is now tracking your refund and the process for which you can go on the portal and actually see where your money is.

- So here's a question-- you're filing your taxes, and you thought you were getting a refund, you find out you owe, and it's much larger than you anticipated. You don't have the funds. Is an extension to file the same thing as an extension to pay? What do I do if I'm in this situation?

DAVID GELTRUDE: Well, there's two pieces to this question. First of all, let's talk about when the tax is due. So just because you don't have the funds to be able to pay what you owe at your tax return and you say, oh, no problem. Let me file an extension. The extension is only for filing the actual return, it doesn't apply to paying your taxes.

So in other words, this year, your taxes are due April 18. You could file an extension in order to actually send the return in, but you must make that tax payment. Now, the second part of this goes back to, OK, I didn't expect to owe this much. I don't have the funds to pay my taxes. What do I do?

First thing-- file the tax return anyway. Send the return in, because you don't want to have a situation where you have a failure to file penalty along with interest. So send in the tax return. Also, whatever funds you do have to make a payment, do that as well.

Now, you do have a couple of options. You could apply to go on an installment agreement, which is through form 9465. And that will give you 72 months in order to make that payment for your taxes. Or you could also file for what's called an offer in compromise, which is basically to say, I don't have the money.

This is what I have right now. So how about you accept this number, which is less than what you owe, as full payment? So those are what your options are if you don't have the funds to pay your taxes on April 18.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: And in terms of, perhaps, major life changes-- say you got married last year and you're trying to decide whether it's better to file jointly or separately-- how do you maximize your returns and avoid any marriage penalties?

DAVID GELTRUDE: Yeah. You know, that marriage penalty, that really bothers a lot of people, which it should. I mean, I don't think people want to look at their marriage as a penalty, do they? But it can turn out that way with taxes. So what you really have to do-- and this is where it comes into you have to consider whether you want to have a professional actually prepare your tax return-- is that you prepare your tax return and you input all of the numbers based upon which person earned and which person incurred the various deductions.

And then when you're talking about-- I know before, you were talking about the technology and filing tax returns. So now, you have the ability to actually switch back and forth to say, if I file jointly, what's the impact for my taxes? If I file separately, what's the impact on my taxes? And being able to compare the two is what will determine what's most beneficial and how you file your tax return.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: We do want to thank you for your time this afternoon-- lots of great advice there, a big thank you to Dan Geltrude there.