Did you move and miss your tax refund? Here’s how to recover it
Would you stoop to pick up a dime?
If you answered yes, maybe you're willing to use the Internet or the telephone for a few minutes to get a government check for $1,460.
That's the average amount owed to Clark County residents who changed their addresses and didn't get a refund check for overpayment of federal income taxes.
The Internal Revenue Service counted 1,409 taxpayers in Clark County owed a total of $2 million, because the refund was undeliverable. In many cases, the taxpayers changed addresses.
The average refund increased by 28 percent this year. The IRS said the average rose probably because many taxpayers qualified for the first-time homebuyer's credit or other tax provisions of the stimulus law, also called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
To get a missing refund, a taxpayer should visit irs.gov and click on "Where's My Refund?" The website will show the status of the refund and, in some cases, give instructions on how to get the check delivered. Taxpayers may also phone 1-800-829-1954 for similar information.
Taxpayers can avoid the problem of undelivered refunds by filing tax returns electronically and directing the government to deposit the refund directly to a bank account.
Nationally, the government is looking for 112,000 taxpayers owed a collective $164.6 million. The U.S. Postal Service returns one-third of 1 percent of the refund checks because they cannot be delivered to the specified address.
Contact reporter John G. Edwards at
jedwards@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0420.
