I’m a little worried because I got my tax refund today and Mrs Cad didn’t. I’m always paranoid about putting in the ABA Routing and Account Number wrong although I triple-check. Lets say instead of 100200300 123456789 I put in 100200300 213456789. What protections (if any) are there that someone did not get her refund money? And if there are ways specific to the IRS, are there general safeguards so direct deposits don’t go to the wong account from operator error?
And yes I know I can check to see if her refund was issued but I’m at work and do not have access to her refund amount to check.
All ABA numbers contain a check digit which according to Wikipedia should detect any single incorrect digit and most swapped digit mistakes. So if you did enter the number incorrectly, most likely it would be detected as a mistake rather than the money credited to someone else’s account.
I believe they also match against account name, don’t they?
On the direct deposit does it have to match my name the accounts is under my sisters name ?
Yes. If there is a mismatch between the name on your tax return versus the name on your bank account, there’s a good chance that the bank will reject this payment and send it back to the IRS.
For the record, the IRS says they’re still processing hers; it was efiled about 3 hours after mine so the “week” might have ticked over during that time.
But I’m still interested in the answers. I wonder if banks make their account numbers similar to markn_1’s description of ABA numbers in that no two valid account numbers differ by only 1 digit or two transcribed digits. Seems they should if only to prevent oopsie doopsies from tellers.
I wonder if the check digit is using the Luhn algorithm – the one used on credit cards. It will catch any single-digit error and all transposition except 0/1.
There are more robust algorithms but Luhn’s is quick and easy to apply – for a computer at least.
I try to avoid mistakes like this by copying and pasting the account and routing numbers from the statement or bank website (the account number is on my statement, while the routing number is on the bank website).
The Wikipedia article I linked to above describes the ABA check digit algorithm. It’s similar to but not identical to Luhn. BTW there are better algorithms than either one of these; the Verhoeff algorithm for example detects more types of errors than Luhn does.
IIRC from 45+ years ago, several of my siblings got sequential account numbers when my parents opened the accounts for them at the same time. We aren’t close enough for me to ask what their bank account info is after all this time.