Short answer: No.
If you file bankruptcy while waiting for a refund, or before you have even filed a return for a past year, the Trustee will take it. Two notes about that:
1) It's a one-time thing. What is really happening is, the bankruptcy estate is created at the moment you file the case in court. So it is in effect a financial "snapshot" of your situation at that moment. If you are owed a refund - even for a tax year that was years before, and even if you don't know how much it is because you haven't prepared your return yet -
the bankruptcy trustee will take it. But you don't keep giving up future refunds.
2) There is a simple solution: file the return, receive the refund and spend it before filing. Ask legal counsel what types of uses of excess money are appropriate. Many are not.
Please see my video, linked above, for my description of this.
