Video of Congressman Sherman in Action
Depending on whether you are due a refund or owe a debt, you have come to either love or hate Internal Revenue Service (IRS) around this time of the year. Overall, I suspect that public sentiment towards this agency takes a turn for the worse – especially during tough economic times like we are experiencing now. That is why, with the tax filing deadline behind us, I am highlighting the fact that the IRS actually owes some Los Angelenos money.
This year, there are nearly 5,000 taxpayers in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties who are owed a collective $5,477,862 in undeliverable tax refunds from the 2008 tax year. In many instances, the United States Postal Service was unable to deliver refund checks due to mailing address errors. Of course, we made sure to find out the correct address to mail our returns to the IRS, but why does the IRS not know ours?
If a taxpayer moves after filing his or her tax return and doesn’t leave a forwarding address, the Postal Service returns the check to the IRS. If a person changes his or her name, perhaps after marriage, and doesn’t notify the Social Security Administration of the name change, then their Social Security number will not properly match in IRS computers. This can slow or prevent the transfer of old refund checks to them. And, in the case of deceased taxpayers, some families and executors of estates may not know that they had an unclaimed refund.
I am a supporter of legislation that requires the IRS to do more to find taxpayers to whom it owes money. In the meantime, in an effort to assist taxpayers collect their tax refunds, I have posted a list of these people who are owed a refund in 2009 on my web page at BradSherman.house.gov.
In California, the top three undeliverable refunds average almost $380,000. Nearly $5.5 million in 2008 tax refunds did not reach the intended Los Angeles County and Ventura County residents with the average check totaling $1,126 in Los Angeles County and $937 in Ventura County. This information is also listed at BradSherman.house.gov.
The Internal Revenue Service owes refunds to 831 residents in the San Fernando Valley alone. Clearly, we must make it easier to reunite taxpayers with their tax refunds.
For a struggling family, a few hundred or even a thousand dollars can help defer the costs of housing, food, medicine and other important provisions. If there is any chance you have an unclaimed refund, please check my website to see if you’re on the list and learn how to contact the IRS to collect your refund. If you do not have access to the Internet, call my San Fernando Valley office at (818) 501-9200 and my staff will check for you.
Congressman Sherman represents half of the San Fernando Valley. Before he was elected to Congress in 1996, Sherman, a Certified Public Accountant, was chairman of the California State Board of Equalization, the nation’s only elected tax commission and America’s second largest tax agency.
