IRS Holds Thousands in Unclaimed Checks

Someone from Los Angeles County has a $178,000 check waiting for them at the Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) said Monday.

The attention-getting announcement was part of Sherman’s effort on Tax Day to reunite 4,547 taxpayers from the Los Angeles metropolitan area with the money they are due.

These are people whose tax refund checks were returned to the IRS because they were declared “undeliverable” by the Postal Service and have been lying about ever since.

“It’s like ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’ but Uncle Sam is giving away money instead of Regis Philbin,” Sherman joked during a news conference at the IRS office in Van Nuys.

Taxpayers may not get their tax refunds if they move without leaving a forwarding address, or if they change their name without notifying the Social Security Administration. In some cases, families may not realize deceased family members had an unclaimed tax refund.

Many people are not even aware they are owed money by the IRS, because in some cases the refund may be coming as a result of a math error in their favor that the IRS discovered on their return.

To help people find out if they are owed money, Sherman has posted a list of all those in the Los Angeles metropolitan area who are owed money at his Web site: www.house.gov/sherman.

If they see their name, they can call the IRS at (800) 829-1040 and ask for Form 3911 to claim their refund.

Sherman said he got the idea for posting the list on the Internet after talking to fellow Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Texas).

“We have been talking about how to improve the IRS,” Sherman said. “And we discovered that they had $72 million in tax refunds [from 1998] that hadn’t been sent back. We thought it would be a good idea to go out and tell people about it.”

Sherman said he will meet with the IRS next month to talk about what they can do to improve the distribution of overdue refunds. Sherman conceded that the $178,000 check is not owed to a Valley resident.

But there are a total of 870 undelivered refunds amounting to $798,919 in the San Fernando Valley, according to his office. The largest refund check for the Valley is $81,621; the average refund for the Valley is $918.