2011 Tax Refunds About To Be Barred Under Statute of Limitations

Posted on April 03, 2015

Chicago area tax attorney, Patrick T. Sheehan warns that if you have not yet filed your federal Form 1040 tax return for 2011 with the IRS, any refund listed on that tax return will soon be barred by the refund statute of limitation.

“Generally speaking, a taxpayer has three years from the due date of the tax return to claim a refund for that year. The due date of the 2011 federal Form 1040 tax returns was April 15, 2012. The expiration of the refund statute of limitation for 2011 is April 15, 2015. If you have not yet filed your federal Form 1040 tax return for 2011 with the IRS, I strongly urge you to do so on or before April 15, 2015, to ensure that you receive the refund to which you are entitled,” Sheehan suggested.

The IRS recently announced that nearly 1.12 million households should have filed federal returns but didn’t, leaving $1.04 billion in unclaimed refunds for 2011. According to IRS estimates, half of the potential refunds for 2011 are $698.00 or more.

If your tax return for 2011 is filed on or after April 15, 2015, the law bars any refund to which you are entitled. Even if you have unpaid liabilities for other years, the lost refund does not apply to any of the other years. Sheehan stresses that, “The application of this law acts to deny refunds to which hard-working Americans are otherwise entitled. Unfortunately, many millions of dollars are lost in this fashion every year simply because taxpayers did not file their tax returns within the applicable limitation period. I would rather see these funds go into the pockets of the taxpayers who earned this money instead of being kept by the federal government.”

Patrick T. Sheehan is a former IRS attorney and is owner of Patrick T. Sheehan and Associates, Attorneys at Law, P.C. Mr. Sheehan’s practice focuses exclusively on assisting individuals and businesses with their tax disputes before the Internal Revenue Service and the Illinois Department of Revenue. Patrick T. Sheehan and Associates is the largest tax dispute resolution law firm in DuPage County. For more information regarding Patrick T. Sheehan and Associates and the services they offer, call 877 – 4 IRS LAW or visit their website at www.sheehan-law.com.

“If you have not yet filed your tax return for 2011 or for any other year, please immediately call me,” Sheehan advised. “We can help.”