IRS Announces That Thousands Of Tax Credits Remain Unclaimed

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

29 October 2003

The Internal Revenue Service has reminded taxpayers that they have until December 5 to claim well over 100,000 undelivered checks for the child tax credit mailed out during the summer, and has warned that these amounts can no longer be claimed after the cut-off date.

“Time is running out to get an advance child credit check,” said IRS Commissioner Mark Everson. “We encourage taxpayers to visit IRS.gov to see if they have an undelivered check from the advance child tax credit mail-out.”

In all, the IRS has money for more than 200,000 taxpayers whose income tax refund or advance child tax credit checks were undelivered and were therefore returned to the agency. Taxpayers need to update their addresses before the IRS can reissue the checks, which total more than $118 million.

In addition to the 115,744 child credit checks worth more than $50 million, there were another 92,810 “regular” tax refund checks, issued to refund tax overpayments, returned to the IRS as undelivered. These “regular” refund checks total more than $66 million — an average of $722 per check.

"Our Web site makes it easy for taxpayers to track undelivered checks," commented Everson. “Our goal is to get this money back in the hands of the people it belongs to, and we want to get the checks out as soon as possible.”

“All we need is a good address,” Everson said. “As soon as we get the correct address we can start the check on its way. We urge taxpayers to act before Dec. 5 for the advance payments so we can reissue the checks before the end of the year.”

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