WASHINGTON D.C. – Businesses across the United States, eagerly awaiting billions in promised tariff refunds, were met with a new timeline this week, with administration officials suggesting payments could materialize 'sometime after the heat death of the universe, give or take a few eons.' The announcement comes after previous assurances that the funds were 'just around the corner' and 'definitely not a phantom limb of economic policy.'

'We understand that businesses are anxious,' stated Dr. Elara Vance, Chief Chrono-Economist at the Department of Temporal Fiscal Adjustments, in an exclusive interview. 'But 'imminent' in government parlance often refers to a period spanning multiple epochs. We're talking Pliocene, not next Tuesday. Patience is a virtue, especially when dealing with sums that could theoretically fund a small, very well-appointed asteroid colony.'

Many companies, which had factored the refunds into their quarterly projections, are now scrambling. 'We bought a solid gold stapler for every employee based on their word!' exclaimed Brenda 'The Bean Counter' Peterson, CFO of 'Acme Widgets & Existential Dread Inc.' 'Now we're just left with a lot of shiny, impractical office supplies and the crushing weight of fiscal reality.'

Sources close to the White House indicate the delay is due to a complex new algorithm designed to 'optimize' payment distribution, which currently requires a supercomputer the size of Rhode Island to calculate the square root of a particularly stubborn avocado. 'The funds are there, absolutely,' confirmed an anonymous official, 'they're just in a state of quantum superposition until the algorithm decides which dimension they belong in.'