Many people, plain and simple, shouldn't bet on getting their refund money quickly. The Internal Revenue Service is once again cautioning taxpayers not to rely on "receiving a refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills." The IRS has a list of reasons that refund money could take months to get, even if you file electronically, including cases of identity theft. Many tax professionals and early filers tell me they've had no trouble getting federal refunds within two weeks or so of electronically filing. So, that's some good news. Last year, of course, the IRS found itself in an outlandish mess involving refund delays – a mess that continues to bog down refunds. The IRS had a backlog of more than 17 million unprocessed tax returns from last year as of early February – including 10.8 million unprocessed individual returns, according to Senate Finance Committee testimony by Erin Collins, the national taxpayer advocate. That figure includes both paper returns and some electronically filed returns that had been suspended during processing, often due to mistakes on the return.