Does anyone know if the IRS flags in any manner, stale dated checks? Reason for asking, I have told customer it could take 3 years for the IRS to return check. Someone else thought it would be less time, because the check is several years old. (It was lost and they found it.)
Thanks!

The rules on negotiating tax refund checks are rules of the Treasury Department, not rules of the IRS. They are found in 31 CFR Part 240.

The general rule is that a U.S. Treasury check is VOID after one year. That's different from checks that you and I write, which may or may not be paid if they're more than 6 months old. Treasury checks will simply be refused by the Federal Reserve Bank if they are first processed by a bank more than one year from the month in which they were issued. That will happen quite quickly, because the checks don't need to go any further than the first FRB to handle the check.

When someone finds a Treasury check that's more than a year old, they should return the check to the certifying agency (the government agency that gave Treasury the instructions to create it in the first place) -- in this case, the IRS, and ask that it be re-issued.

If the check in question is less than one year old, it's not stale-dated under Treasury regulations. However, the payee should deposit it quickly to avoid running into that one-year deadline.

Thanks for the information. Helps me much!