The Internal Revenue Service says there is more than $1 billion in unclaimed tax refunds from the year 2020.
About 940,000 people throughout the U.S. have not yet filed their 2020 tax returns and have until May 17 to claim their share of the unclaimed tax refunds, according to the IRS.
“There’s money remaining on the table for hundreds of thousands of people who haven’t filed 2020 tax returns,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said in March. “We want taxpayers to claim these refunds, but time is running out for people who may have overlooked or forgotten about these refunds.”
Usually, tax filers have three years to claim their refunds. But due to the pandemic, the IRS extended the deadline for 2020 to May 17.
There are few steps and documents required to claim your 2020 refund.
You may not have gotten your tax refund for 2020, if you did not file your tax returns for 2021 and/or 2022.
But if you have filed your tax returns from those years, you will need to have several documents on hand to file your 2020 tax return.
Here are some of the forms you may need:
- Form W-2: Your employer issues this document and it states your income from the previous year and withheld taxes.
- Form 1099: The 1099 reports income from freelance work or any non-employer income, including income from interest.
- Form 5498: The 5498 reports how much you contributed to your individual retirement account.
If you do not have any of the three documents stated above, you should get in touch with your employer or bank.
If you still can’t get those documents, there is the IRS’s “Get Transcript Online” tool, which you can use to get a wage and income transcript for free.
But you’ll want to hurry on filing that 2020 tax return. Unclaimed funds become the U.S. Treasury’s property after the deadline.
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Katherine Rodriguez can be reached at krodriguez@njadvancemedia.com. Have a tip? Tell us at nj.com/tips.
