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Ideally, yes. If you need to preserve the ability to get refunds earlier than April 15 then one of two things needs to happen:

1. Move up the deadline for companies to submit tax information to the IRS, or

2. Allow taxpayers to declare that the IRS will not receive any more tax information than what they already have, with penalties for lying (presumably, the same penalties as what happens today if you submit your taxes early and you yourself haven't received all the relevant information yet).

Or we could just pay the one-time hit of "you can't get your refund early" and have the IRS process taxes once the existing deadline has passed for companies submitting tax information to the IRS. I say one-time hit because after the first time, any refunds for following years would occur 1 year after the previous year's refund, just like it does today, it would just be at a different point in the year (assuming you even submitted taxes early to begin with; if you didn't, then no change).




#1 - You’d have the entire corporate world up in arms every year.

#2 - Probably the best solution, though kind of waters down the revolution.

#3 - Probably what SHOULD happen, but again, political suicide.




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