Lag times for processing hard-copy US, MA tax returns

Does the state of Taxxachussetts have a web page on which one may check status of refund? Different states vary as to efficiency of course, and based on previous experience with your state, they're not so efficient.

ChEAr$, Harlan Lunsford, EA n LA

Yup. Here it is:

Yes. I'm not really in any hurry, so I didn't bother to check, but prompted by your question, I went and tried to use the service to find out the status of my refund. Here's what happened...

First of all, you can't just give them proof-of-identity information and get the status of your refund. You have to first register as a user of their site and choose a username and password. This is monumentally stupid, since 99% of people who want to use this service are ONLY going to want to use this service, and nothing else on the site, and there's no reason to make them choose and remember a username and password just to find out the status of their refund.

Second, I entered "jik+ snipped-for-privacy@kamens.brookline.ma.us" as my email address, since I always "tag" email addresses I give out to Web sites so that if I suddenly start receiving spam on one of those addresses, I know whom to blame. Alas, the Mass. DOR Web site, like so many other shoddily programmed Web sites, rejects that address because of the "+" sign in it, even though "+" is a completely valid character in an email address. It's incompetence and laziness, and nothing else, which causes so many Web sites not to get the simple task of validating email addresses correct.

Third, when I changed my email address to one that the Web site would accept and tried to register again, I got: "Our back end system is not available to validate your data. Please try again later." Mind you, this was at 8:40pm, not exactly the middle of the night when they might perhaps be justified in taking down their "back end system" for maintenance. In any case, I've worked for plenty of companies which managed 99.9% up-time for their production systems, so again, it's incompetence and laziness, and nothing else, which is to blame for the fact that the Mass. DOR can't manage to do it.

My experience is that web sites that are stupid enough to reject "+" in email addresses are likewise stupid enough to do the validation clientside. The fix is obvious.

Seth