State tax refund wait will be a bit longer

Louisiana taxpayers who quickly filed their state taxes and are eagerly waiting for their tax refunds will have to keep waiting.
The state Department of Revenue announced that it won’t start issuing refunds until the week of March 2.
The department said it was taking “extra precautions to verify the filings” because of concerns about fraudulent tax returns that had been discovered around the country.
Refunds were previously planned to start going out next week before the delay was announced. The revenue department says the week-long postponement will give it more time to use a verification process to identify individual taxpayers.
Nearly 665,000 electronic returns have been filed with the state since Jan. 20, with no refunds issued so far.
The department offers online tools for tracking refunds at http://revenue.louisiana.gov/Individuals.
The deadline for filing Louisiana individual income tax returns this year will be May 15 for most taxpayers, a month after the deadline for filing federal tax returns.
Some returns, whether electronic or paper, are randomly selected for review. If your return has been selected for review, then the review process can take up to 16 weeks.