IRS: Thousands of taxpayers leaving refund on the table

Hundreds of thousands of taxpayers are at risk of leaving old tax refunds on the table, the IRS said Tuesday.

{mosads}The tax agency said that almost $760 million worth of refunds could be available to the roughly 918,000 taxpayers who didn’t file a return for 2010.

Taxpayers have until April 15 to file their 2010 returns and claim those refunds – half of which, according to the IRS, would be for more than $571.

“The window is quickly closing for people who are owed refunds from 2010 who haven’t filed a tax return,” the IRS commissioner, John Koskinen, said in a statement. “We encourage students, part-time workers and others who haven’t filed for 2010 to look into this before time runs out on April 15.”

Taxpayers don’t face any penalty for claiming a refund late. But they do, in effect, donate their refund to the Treasury if they don’t claim it within three years.

The IRS release Tuesday suggested that some of the taxpayers who haven’t filed had taxes withheld from their paycheck, but didn’t earn enough to have to file a return.