According to the latest TIGTA audit report, there were some serious delays with the issuing of refunds this tax season, but things have already improved.  TIGTA cites “programming problems” as the source of the delays.

Our report found that the IRS is catching and preventing more fraudulent refunds and screening more prisoner tax returns; however, programming problems associated with Modernized e-File delayed some refunds, which may have contributed to a doubling of visits to the  “Where’s My Refund” feature at IRS.gov over the previous year.

~ J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration

If you tried to use the tool early in the tax filing season, you may have suspected it was broken.  I used the “Where’s My Refund” tool and found that it worked just fine (both on the IRS website and using the mobile app IRS2Go) as long as you wait the requisite 72 hours after filing your return.  Of course this was after the kinks were worked out of  the refund process.  TIGTA says that the source of the delays was found and fixed by February 18th.  So I guess it paid to delay just a little this year…