Deadline to Claim Tax Rebates Nearing

Tax officials are urging more than a quarter of a million Americans who haven’t received their tax refund checks to step forward and claim them quickly or risk waiting until next year to get their money.

About 295,000 of the advance refund checks--ranging from $300 to $600--were returned to the Internal Revenue Service as undeliverable. The IRS also has 95,500 refund checks from regular tax filings that were returned because taxpayers moved and didn’t send the IRS a forwarding address, the agency said Tuesday.

The regular tax refunds are worth an average of $927 per check, the agency says. The advance refund checks, which were part of this year’s big tax cut bill, average $322 per check. In all, taxpayers with undeliverable refunds are owed more than $180 million.

“All we need is a good address,” said IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti. “As soon as we get the correct address, we’ll start the check on its way.”

To get prompt payment of advance refund checks, taxpayers should contact the IRS within the next month, Rossotti said. That’s because the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2001--the legislation that spurred the IRS to send out 85 million advance refund check this summer and fall--requires those checks to be issued before Dec. 31. The IRS must have the information in hand by Dec. 5 to give the agency time to process the checks before that deadline, Rossotti said.

If eligible taxpayers do not get a refund check this year, they can claim the amount as a credit on their 2001 tax returns, officials added. But eligible taxpayers who want the money this year should call the IRS’ toll-free assistance line at (800) 829-1040 and provide the agency with a current address.

There is no deadline for collecting regular refund checks. However, undelivered refunds don’t generate any interest payments for the taxpayer, the IRS noted. They simply gather dust until the taxpayer claims them.