---
title: Why Some People Would Happily Wait an Extra Long Time for Their Tax Refunds
description: A Bankrate survey asked people if they'd wait longer for tax refunds if it reduced fraud, estimated to cost taxpayers $21 billion this year.
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published: '2016-03-14T14:26:35.000Z'
modified: '2016-03-14T14:26:35.000Z'
section: Taxes
tags:
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  - Taxes
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canonical: https://money.com/tax-refund-fraud-wait/
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source: structured-blocks
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![Tax Refund Checks Star of Republican Rally](https://img.money.com/2016/03/gettyimages-1606349.jpg)

The tax refund is seen as a nice unexpected windfall that comes every spring, a gift of sorts. In reality, of course, it's just money that you overpaid being returned to you.

So why do 35% of taxpayers say they'd be willing to wait another one to two months or more to get their money back? Fraud and identity theft.

Tax refund fraud is a real problem that's [only getting bigger](https://money.com/protect-against-soaring-tax-refund-fraud/?iid=sr-link1). Two years ago, it cost taxpayers around $6.5 billion. That figure will likely skyrocket to $21 billion this year, [according to CNBC](http://www.cnbc.com/2015/02/11/tax-refund-fraud-to-hit-21-billion-and-theres-little-the-irs-can-do.html). The staggering amount of fraud that took place in 2014 occurred even though 180,000 legitimate filers were flagged and [forced to wait 18 weeks](http://www.bankrate.com/financing/taxes/false-fraud-filters-delay-irs-tax-refunds/) until everything was checked out.

It doesn't take much more than a name, social, and date of birth to file a false return, and the ease of manipulating the system wears on consumers, who overwhelmingly stated they'd wait longer if it meant less fraud in a study [conducted by Bankrate](http://www.bankrate.com/finance/consumer-index/money-pulse-0316.aspx).

The data shows that just 15% of files would refuse to wait any longer, and 5% said they'd wait less than a week but no more, if the additional time prevented identity theft and tax refund fraud.

Meanwhile, 72% of survey respondents said they'd be OK waiting one or more weeks for their tax returns, and 35% said they'd be fine waiting one more or longer. Specifically, 22% said they'd wait one to two months, and 13% said they'd wait more than two months, if doing so helped the resource-strapped IRS cut down on fraud.

[![Best college education image](https://content.money.com/wp-content/themes/money2018/img/college-site-banner-01.png)](https://best-colleges.time.com/money/search-colleges/?xid=cm-mcpTop200Widget)

If you find yourself consistently dissatisfied with waiting weeks for a considerable refund year after year, you do have recourse other than getting put on hold by the IRS: Adjust your withholding so you pay less in taxes, and therefore reduce the size of your refund.

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