The IRS recently announced that there are approximately $1.3 billion in unclaimed tax refunds for the 2006 tax year for an estimated 1.4 million taxpayers.

Many taxpayers have not filed because they didn’t have enough income to require them to file a tax return – even though they had taxes withheld from their wages.  The law only allows these taxpayers a three year window to claim their refund – after that, the money becomes property of the U.S.Treasury.    For 2006 returns, the deadline to claim their refund if April 15, 2010.

The IRS provided a breakdown of these refunds by State.  In South Carolina, there were 16,400 individuals that have yet to apply for $13.8 million in refunds.  In North Carolina, there were 39,100 individuals that have yet to file for their $32.9 million in refunds. 

The IRS makes it sound like all of these taxpayers are due money back.  In actuality, all of these taxpayers are due money back based on the data that the IRS currently has available to them.  Many of these taxpayers may actually owe money if they file their tax returns.  This may very well be the reason that many of them have yet to file.

This brings me to a little rant.  It is amazing to me how many businesses that we run across that have simply not filed a tax return in several years.  Some of these businesses are making money, many of them are losing money.  Either way, if you are a business you need to file your returns.  From talking to many of these business owners, it basically comes down to one of two things – laziness or dishonesty.  Those that are the result of laziness usually have very poor records and don’t keep up with it anyway.  These business owners are destined to fail.  It is only a matter of time.  Most of them are losing money anyway due to the poor management of the owners.

The other class are the ones that do not file because they are afraid they will owe – and either don’t have the money to pay it or don’t want to pay it.  I have no idea how the IRS can not track these jokers down, but they are out there – everywhere.   I will end my rant now.

Tags: tax refunds, unclaimed refunds

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 11:08 am and is filed under Individual Taxes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.