When you move to a different residence, do you immediately contact your creditors to let them know where you are?  Suuuure you do.  When you get around to it…

It’s no secret that some people spend their lives moving from place, just one step ahead of the IRS or other taxing agencies.  Although certainly not advisable, some people have good reasons for keeping their location a secret.  And then there are the others.  The brilliant 45,000 or so people in California who haven’t claimed their prior year state refund(s) yet.  The refund amounts range from $1.00 to $54,000.00 (total more than $16 million), and a majority of these people simply moved and didn’t update their address with FTB.  In other words, it isn’t so much that they haven’t claimed the refunds, but they were returned by the Postal Service due to the FTB having a bad address.

There is an easy fix to this problem.  Keeping your address up-to-date would be one way, but there is an even better fix.  DIRECT DEPOSIT.  If you use direct deposit for your tax refund, you get your payment so much quicker, and if you move you still get paid right on schedule (assuming you didn’t change banks).