The Canada Revenue Agency said Monday it has about $1.4 billion worth of uncashed checks on its books, some of which were due as far back as 1998. As of May, 8.9 million Canadians had some type of uncashed check to their name their. The average amount owed is $158, the tax agency said. “We want to make sure this money ends up where it belongs. In the taxpayers’ pockets!” said the tax agency. The revenue service said it will soon notify about 25,000 recipients of the Canada child benefit and related provincial/territorial programs, the GST/HST credit and the Alberta energy tax refund if they are owed money. Another group of 25,000 will be notified in November and another group in May 2023. While the Internal Revenue Service administers billions of dollars in taxes and rebates each year, not all of it reaches the hands of eligible Canadians, mostly because people either lose the checks or change addresses, meaning they never received them in the first place. The CRA began working on its outstanding uncashed checks in February 2020 and since then said it has refunded $802 million to taxpayers who owed money and didn’t know it. The CRA said Canadians can check if they have cashless payments by logging in or registering for a CRA online account.
