With the depressed economy and high unemployment, you can be sure taxpayers will want their tax refund as soon as possible. But where do you go to check the status of your income tax refund? The IRS webpage Where’s my refund is the place to check the status of your federal income tax refund.

Information about the status of your tax refund is generally available 72 hours after the IRS acknowledges receipt of your e-file return, or 3 - 4 weeks after mailing a paper return.

This tax help service requires you to provide the following information from your tax return:

• Your Social Security Number (or Individual Taxpayer Identification Number)
• Your Filing Status
• The exact whole dollar amount of your refund<

One very important note about getting the status of your income tax refund is that if you’re affected by recently reinstated tax breaks and you already filed your tax return, it will be processed beginning Monday, February 14, 2011. For more information regarding the delay in processing tax returns due to the tax law changes, check the IRS news bulletin at http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=234736,00.html.

And always remember, the IRS never initiates email. So avoid the e-mail scams and offers of tax help by deleting them from your computer. The IRS will always contact you via U.S. mail.

For more tax help visit the IRS website.

The good news is, if you filed your income tax return using e-file, you will know the status of your tax refund in as little as 3 days.

source: irs.gov

Did you know the IRS offers tax help to small business owners through its Small Business and Self-Employed Tax Center? The tax center offers extensive resources and online tools to small businesses and the self-employed.

The IRS Small Business and Self-Employed Tax Center offers tax help resources:

• Small business forms and publications
• Employer Identification Number online application
• Employment tax information – federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare taxes, FUTA and self-employment tax
• Tax-related news that could affect your business
• Small business educational events
• IRS videos for small businesses
• A-Z Index for Business – find information fast using the A-Z listing

The site provides tax tips and important information available for all stages of owning a business. Whether you’re starting, operating, or closing a business, visit the site for federal income tax help

Other tax tips and resources available on the IRS small business website include a virtual small business tax workshop, video and audio presentations, a guide to IRS audits, and a tax calendar designed for small business taxpayers.

The IRS Video Portal:
Tax Questions? Learn about tax topics through video and audio presentations on the IRS Video Portal. The video portal contains archived versions of live panel discussions, archived webinars, video clips, and audio archives of national phone forums.

IRS Audits Video Series:
“Your Guide to an IRS Audit” takes the viewer through the steps of an audit from notification to closing. The video series is composed of scenarios that demonstrate the stages of each type of audit: correspondence, office and field. The scenarios address issues that are common to audits of small businesses.

Virtual Small Business Tax Workshop:
The IRS Virtual Small Business Tax Workshop is an interactive resource to help small business owners learn about their federal tax rights and responsibilities. The workshop contains nine stand-alone lessons that can be selected and viewed in any sequence. The workshop is available online 24 hours a day, seven days a week from any computer. It can also be ordered on CD.

Tax Calendar for Small Business Taxpayers:
The Tax Calendar for Small Businesses and Self-Employed – Publication 1518 – is available online or as a printable PDF file. This 12-month calendar is filled with information on general business taxes, IRS and Social Security Administration customer assistance, electronic filing and paying options, retirement plans, business publications and forms, and common tax filing dates. Each page highlights different tax issues and tips that may be relevant to small-business owners, with room on each month to add notes, state tax dates or business appointments. You can also download the tax events into your calendar or subscribe to the tax calendar events. The calendar provides the small business owner with a ready resource for meeting their tax obligations.

Small business owners and the self-employed should take advantage of the tax tips and tax help provided by the IRS small business website.

Source: irs.gov

If you are an employee and unsure whether you’re having too much or too little Federal Income Tax withheld from your pay, the IRS Withholding Calculator is the perfect tool for you.  Instead of guessing on how much to withhold from your pay or relying on advice from others, the Withholding Calculator is extremely useful.

Employees can also benefit from the IRS Withholding Calculator:

• to reduce their tax refund or their balance due
• to determine if they need to increase their withholding due to the Making Work Pay provision in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, that caused changes to the federal income tax withholding tables and may result in too little tax being withheld when they are in a situation when withholding is only approximated by the worksheets on the paper W-4 (e.g., anyone with concurrent jobs, or couples in which both are employed; those entitled to file as Head of Household; and those with several children eligible for the Child Tax Credit)
• when non-wage income in excess of their adjustments and deductions, who would prefer to have tax on that income withheld from their paychecks rather than make periodic separate payments through the estimated tax procedures.

Warning: If you will be subject to alternative minimum tax, self-employment tax, or other taxes; or if any of your current jobs will end before the end of the year, you will probably achieve more accurate withholding by following the instructions in Publication 919, How Do I Adjust My Tax Withholding?

To change your withholding simply use the results from the withholding tax calculator to help complete a new Form W-4, Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate; then submit the completed form to your employer.

source: irs.gov