11 May If you haven’t filed your tax returns

Q. I haven’t done my taxes yet and I figure it’s time to get it all together. I didn’t do the last two years either. The IRS hasn’t sent me anything, which I’m surprised about. Could I just avoid filing? I only earn $28,000 a year so I don’t think I owe anything. What should I do?
— Tax avoider

A. Avoiding the IRS is not a gamble we’d recommend anyone take.

Given your salary level, there’s a good chance you don’t owe anything to Uncle Sam, but Uncle Sam may owe you.

“The chances are if you are a wage earner and claimed normal withholding exemptions on Form W-4 filed with your employer that you are overpaid,” said Neil Becourtney, a certified public accountant and tax partner with CohnReznick in Eatontown.

He said the IRS is not required to issue any income tax refunds where the income tax return is filed more than three years after the original due date.

Your 2014 federal income tax return was due April 15, 2015, so you have less than one year to not lose out on a potential refund for 2014, he said.

The IRS has undergone a series of budget cuts in recent years and has announced that it knows that the non-filer population is not declining.

“Your income level likely makes you a low priority for their limited resources, which may explain why you have not received any correspondence from the IRS regarding your situation,” Becourtney said. “If the IRS catches up with you at some point in the future and more than three years have elapsed from the original due date for any delinquent Form 1040, then you will lose out on receiving any refund for those tax years.”

Becourtney recommends you get caught up with your delinquent income tax returns — presumably you have also not filed your state income tax returns and the same advice applies — as soon as possible.

“Nothing good will come from not meeting your obligations under our voluntary tax system to file income tax returns annually,” he said. “You can obtain the necessary tax forms including those needed for years prior to 2016 from the IRS web site.”

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This story was first published in May 2017.