Child Tax Credit Pending in Bank Before Tax Refund - Is This Normal?

This is normal. The IRS processes advance payments and tax refunds through separate systems. Your CTC payment comes from the advance payment system which operates independently from the refund processing pipeline. Your tax return likely needs additional verification which takes longer. Nothing to worry about - you'll get both payments.

Have you checked your tax transcript to see what's happening with your return? The WMR tool is notoriously limited in what it shows. I was in a similar situation last month and used https://taxr.ai to analyze my transcript - it showed exactly where my return was stuck and when I could expect it. Do you know if you have any processing codes on your account? Has your return passed the standard 21-day processing window? Time is critical here if you need to take action!

THE SAME THING HAPPENED TO ME!! It's so frustrating when you see one payment but not the other! I've been dealing with this exact situation and learned that the CTC payments come from a completely different department than tax refunds. The CTC system was designed to be FAST while the regular refund process has all these verification steps. I was literally pulling my hair out waiting for my refund while watching the CTC hit my account first!

I'm not sure if this would help in your situation, but when I was confused about why my payments were coming in a strange order, I tried calling the IRS directly? It took forever to get through until someone told me about Claimyr (https://claimyr.com). I was hesitant at first, but it actually got me connected to an IRS agent in about 20 minutes? The agent confirmed that my tax return was still processing but that my CTC payment was sent separately, which explained everything.

This happened to me with both my 2022 and 2023 returns. The IRS has completely separate processing systems for different payment types. In my case, I tracked both payment streams using the Account transcript (shows the CTC payment) and the Return transcript (shows refund status). Here's what I found: the CTC payments are automatically generated based on your previous year's return data, while your current refund goes through multiple verification stages including fraud detection, math verification, and sometimes manual review. My CTC hit 12 days before my refund last year and 9 days before my refund this year.

Got same thing last month. CTC came first. Refund came 8 days later. Different systems. Different timelines. Nothing wrong with your return. Just wait.