IRS already uses to screen out questionable returns for human review.
The IRS historically does not reveal its secret formulas, for a good reason: the more you divulge to your electronic adversary, the easier you make it for him/her/them to attack you.
If the magnitude of refund that triggered a hold was built into a publicly-accessible interface (app), wouldn't that knowledge in short order be used to defraud the system?
Or maybe they don't *want* to do it, for good business reasons.
Today, I saw a couple of news items indicating that the IRS had "problems" with refunds from some early filers.
For me, 47 days since filing and counting. The system originally said I should get it by February 14. That was 3 weeks ago.
Maybe. But lying for good reasons is still lying.
They shouldn't publish an app purporting to tell you when you're going to get your refund when it doesn't actually tell you that.
If they use a single number, they're idiots. If they use a bunch of factors to increase the probability of a hold, the app could (safely) say something like "there's normally a 2-week period, but your return has a 27% probability of being held for manual review which would take longer."
Seth
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