IBA Compliance Connection

Your go to source for compliance!

The Illinois Treasurer’s website states that our unclaimed property report “should reflect account activity for the one-year period three years prior to June 30 of the report year. Example: If your report is due Nov. 1, 2018, your report will cover activity from July 1, 2014, through June 30, 2015.” Shouldn’t we be submitting data for three years under the new law?

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We agree that the Treasurer’s website contains confusing wording. The Illinois Revised Uniform Unclaimed Property Act (Illinois RUUPA) requires each annual report to “cover the 12 months preceding July 1 of that year.” Additionally, the report made in 2018 must incorporate a one-time lookback covering “all items of property that would have been presumed abandoned during the 5-year period preceding the effective date of this Act as if this Act had been in effect during that period.”

We would restate the reporting requirement as covering any property for which the presumed abandonment period concluded between July 1 of the previous year and June 30 of the current year. Additionally, the first report filed on November 1, 2018, also must include any property for which the presumed abandonment period concluded between January 1, 2013, and January 1, 2018, if not previously reported. Note that the new Illinois RUUPA, which became effective on January 1, 2018, expands the presumption of abandonment for various classes of property, so your bank very well may have additional property to report as abandoned from this one-time, five-year lookback period.

For resources related to our guidance, please see:

  • Illinois RUUPA, 765 ILCS 1026/15-403(a) (A bank’s annual unclaimed property report “must be filed before November 1 of each year and cover the 12 months preceding July 1 of that year.”)
  • Illinois RUUPA, 765 ILCS 1026/15-1503(a) (“An initial report filed under this Act for property that was not required to be reported before the effective date of this Act, but that is required to be reported under this Act, must include all items of property that would have been presumed abandoned during the 5-year period preceding the effective date of this Act as if this Act had been in effect during that period.”)