Still haven't seen your IRS refund check or your stimulus payment? It may have gotten stuck in the mail.
Thousands of tax filers – including more than 2,700 in the eight-county Sacramento region – have undelivered payments waiting for them, IRS officials said Thursday.
The payments, totaling more than $34.4 million in California and $266 million nationwide, were marked "undeliverable" by the U.S. Postal Service and sent back to IRS tax centers in recent months.
If it's a tax refund, the check will stay with your tax account until you provide the IRS with an updated address or file next year's taxes.
But if it's a stimulus check, it's crucial to contact the IRS as soon as possible.
"It's really, really urgent for taxpayers who're getting a stimulus check to contact us by Nov. 28," said IRS spokesman Jesse Weller.
By law, the federal government must issue all stimulus payments by Dec. 31. If the IRS doesn't have your correct address by the end of November, you probably won't get a check this year.
"We don't want people to wait," said Weller. "Certainly with the economy as it is, we know people can use the money."
In the eight-county region, the bulk of the undelivered payments are in Sacramento County. To see if you're among the 2,765 tax filers from this region on the IRS list, go to www.sacbee.com/links.
In California, nearly 31,000 economic stimulus checks totaling about $18.7 million and more than 15,800 regular refund checks totaling about $15.7 million were returned to the IRS as undeliverable. Of those, the average undelivered stimulus payment is $605 and the average refund check is $992.
According to the IRS, less than 1 percent of all stimulus and refund checks were returned this year.
Weller said the primary reasons for returned checks: Taxpayers move after filing, but don't provide the post office or the IRS with a forwarding address. Or paper tax returns filled out by hand have an address that's illegible.
To get your address corrected, contact the IRS so it can resend your check. Here's how:
For stimulus payments, go to www.irs.gov and click on "Where's My Stimulus Payment?" Or call the IRS at (866) 234-2942.
For a refund check, go to www.irs.gov and click on "Where's My Refund?" Or call (800) 829-1954.
Call The Bee's Claudia Buck, (916) 321-1968
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