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By DIETER BRADBURY Online Reporter November 16, 2007

The Internal Revenue Service is looking for Sergio Becerra Jr., and he actually hopes they find him. Becerra, a Wells resident who attends school in Florida, never got the refund he was owed on the federal income tax return he submitted three years ago.

“I was concerned about it and I tried to contact them, but I could never get through,” he said. Becerra is one of 313 Maine taxpayers with unclaimed refund checks, according to the IRS. This week, the agency released the list to the public and urged taxpayers to contact them to collect their money.

Becerra, who said he can’t remember how much of a refund he’s owed, plans to do just that.

“I actually got my check for this year’s return,” he said. “I’m really surprised about the other one.

Mainers like Becerra are owed a total of $213,000 in uncollected refunds, according to the IRS. That means the average refund check is $680.

An agency spokeswoman in Boston, Peggy O’Riley, said the refunds were mailed out as checks but the post office returned them as undeliverable. In most cases, the taxpayers moved and did not leave forwarding addresses, and postmasters would not risk forwarding the checks.

Last year there were only 240 Maine taxpayers with undeliverable refund checks, about 30 percent fewer than this year, O’Riley said. The government thinks the jump reflects an increase in the number of returns filed this year by residents who wouldn’t ordinarily have to file a return but who wanted to claim a credit on taxes they paid on cellular telephone calls.

Most of the undeliverable refunds are for tax year 2006, but some date back to earlier years, O’Riley said.

Gene L. Lambert of Biddeford figures one of those older ones belongs to him. Lambert, a retiree, hasn’t had to file a return for several years, but his name is on the list of taxpayers with an undeliverable refund.

He had no idea the government apparently has money for him until he was called by a reporter. “How do I claim it?” he asked.

O’Riley said a number of people on the IRS list are likely deceased, while others belong to highly mobile populations that change addresses more frequently than the average person, such as students or recent immigrants to the United States.

To help people get the money they’re owed, the agency maintains a special page on its Web site where taxpayers can check the status of their refund and speed it on its way by entering up-to-date information. The IRS also offers a toll-free phone number for refund tracking. O’Riley said the agency relies on media publicity to get the word out about undelivered refunds, and about half of all checks are eventually claimed once the list of names is released.

If a taxpayer is deceased, the refund belongs to his or her estate, O’Riley said, and there is no statute of limitations on the life of a refund. In other words, if you discover that the IRS has a refund check the post office couldn’t deliver to you 20 years ago, you can still collect the money. Does an undelivered refund earn interest? “No,” she said.

Dieter Bradbury is the online reporter for pressherald.com, where this report initially appeared. Bradbury’s beat is designed to engage directly with readers and glean story ideas from your suggestions, Web postings and feedback. If you have comments, please post them at pressherald.com or send Bradbury an e-mail at: dbradbury@pressherald.com