Personal Finance

Here's the First Day You Can File Your Tax Return This Year -- and Why You Should Get it in Early

Maurie Backman

Published: January 13, 2025 10:48 am

Filing taxes is a task most of us need to tackle every year. And what’ll probably happen this year is that a lot of people will wait until just about April 15 (the official deadline) to get their returns completed.

Key Points from 24/7 Wall St.

• The 2025 tax-filing season opens on January 27.
• Filing your taxes early could give you early access to your refund.
• An early filing could also help you avoid fraud.
• Also: Take this quiz to see if you’re on track to retire (Sponsored)

Meanwhile, the IRS just announced that the 2025 tax season will begin on January 27, making that the first day the agency will accept returns. Now this doesn’t mean that you need to rush and file your taxes that very day. But there are some benefits to filing your taxes early you should know about.

You’ll get your refund sooner

In 2024, the average tax refund issued by the IRS came to $3,004. That’s not a small amount of money. And if you’re owed something in that ballpark, you’d probably rather get that cash sooner rather than later.

Well, the sooner you file your tax return this year, the sooner your refund can be issued. The IRS typically processes refunds for electronically filed returns within 21 days. So if you get your taxes done in late January, you could be sitting on your refund by mid-February. If you’re dealing with leftover holiday debt or you have a big expense you’ve been putting off, getting your money sooner is key.

You’ll have more time to deal with owing money

The stock market soared in 2024, leaving a lot of people with capital gains in their portfolios. If you didn’t pay estimated taxes on those gains, you may be looking at writing the IRS a check this filing season. So the sooner you go through the motions of filing your tax return, the better.

No matter when you submit your tax return, you have until April 15 to pay the IRS whatever amount you owe. So say you owe $2,500 due to taking a large amount of market gains, or for another reason — perhaps a side hustle that was more profitable than expected. If you finish your tax return by late January and see that you owe money, you’ll have more than two months to come up with those funds. If you wait until April to do your taxes and learn then that you owe money, you might have to scramble.

You can potentially avoid fraud

Criminals have gotten increasingly adept at stealing Social Security numbers and filing fraudulent tax returns. And if you’re wondering why someone would want to file your taxes for you, the answer is, to get your refund. All they have to do is divert that refund to a bank account they have control over, and the IRS may not be any the wiser.

Another reason it pays to file your taxes early is that you can potentially beat criminals to the punch. See, the IRS’s systems are set up to flag duplicate tax returns. If you file your return early and a criminal then attempts to do the same using your Social Security number, it’s the second return on record — their fake return — that’s going to get bounced as a duplicate. If the opposite happens and a criminal gets into the system first, you’re the one who might have to deal with the hassle of proving to the IRS that your return is the legitimate one.