The Canada Revenue Agency is holding unclaimed cheques for Canadians who may not know about them
By Erika Morris
It’s always a treat to find a long-lost $5 bill or a few forgotten loonies and toonies in an old jacket. Now, Canadians are finding hundreds of dollars in unclaimed cheques on the Canada Revenue Agency’s website. Finding out whether you’re one of those lucky people is simple.
Log in to your CRA account. At the bottom “related services” section on the right side of the page, you’ll find “Uncashed cheques” list with all the amounts owed. You’ll see any cheques that are waiting for you to claim them.
To claim the cheques, you can download a form from the website, which you must sign and also get a witness to sign. Then you just scan the form and submit it online, or you can mail it in. The requests can take up to two months to be processed, and if you owe tax money, the CRA will take the amount out of your cheques.
CRA cheques—tax refunds or GST payments—might remain uncashed because, for example, someone misplaced a cheque or perhaps never received it due to a change of address. Because government cheques never expire, they can’t be voided and reissued without a request.
If you’re set up for direct deposit, the money will be transferred to your account. Otherwise, a new cheque will be mailed to you.
The CRA recently launched the feature and and is encouraging people to use it. After all, a CRA spokesman said in a statement, the money “belongs to Canadians.”
Photo: shutterstock/Andriy R.
