The Minnesota Department of Revenue is reissuing nearly 150,000 one-time tax rebate checks that went uncashed and expired.

The department on Wednesday announced it is mailing a first round of unclaimed checks this week. A second batch will go out in the mail in early December.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz in May signed a $3 billion tax bill authorizing an estimated $1.1 billion in one-time tax rebates for more than two million Minnesotans. The final amount ended up being just less than $1 billion.

Payments started reaching mailboxes and bank accounts in August and September. People who got checks had 60 days from the issue date to cash them in.

Single filers earning up to $75,000 a year were eligible for $260 checks, joint filers earning up to $150,000 were eligible for $520 checks, and households got $260 for each dependent up to three. A married couple with three children could receive up to $1,300.

The Revenue Department determined eligibility based on adjusted gross income in 2021.

Reissued checks will arrive in a plain white envelope from Submittable Holdings, a company located in Missoula, Mont. They’ll have the signature of Revenue Commissioner Paul Marquart and will carry “standard banking safeguards” to prevent fraud.

If rebates continue to go unclaimed for 60 days, the money will end up with the Minnesota Department of Commerce Unclaimed Property Division.

Rebate payments came from Minnesota’s historic $17.5 billion budget surplus, and were part of a record two-year budget of nearly $72 billion passed by Democratic-Farmer-Labor majorities in the legislature and signed by the DFL governor.

Walz had initially pushed for bigger checks of up to $2,000 for joint filers and $1,000 for single filers. In the 2023 legislative session, Walz and DFL legislative leaders reached an agreement to smaller rebates and a slate of tax breaks for low income Minnesotans.

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