California’s Annual Unclaimed Property Report: Who Must File

• A business becomes a "holder" the moment a check, refund, deposit or wage payment goes unclaimed for the statutory dormancy period, whether or not anyone at the company notices.
• Life insurance companies file their notice report before 1 May and remit property between 1 and 15 December; every other business files before 1 November and remits between 1 and 15 June.
• A holder that reports or remits late owes the Controller interest at 12 per cent per annum from the date it should have reported, unless the delay was for reasonable cause.
• The California Voluntary Compliance Program runs year-round and waives that interest for holders that complete its requirements, even if they have never filed before.
• Extension requests are due no later than 30 days before the report is due, so the calendar matters even for a business planning to ask for more time.

Why this might already apply to you

If your business has ever issued a payroll check that came back, held a customer deposit nobody collected, sat on a vendor credit that was never cashed out, or kept a security deposit past the point anyone asked for it, you are probably already a holder of unclaimed property under California law. Most companies that fall into this category are not financial institutions. They are ordinary retailers, contractors, property managers and employers whose accounting systems quietly accumulate stale liabilities that state law treats as belonging to someone else until claimed.

The State Controller’s own unclaimed property file now indexes 14,800,558 records. A large share of them originated not from banks but from routine business operations: a refund check mailed to an old address, a rebate nobody redeemed, a final paycheck sent after an employee had moved on. The obligation to report these amounts to the Controller is not optional and does not depend on the dollar value being large.

What actually has to be reported

Once property has gone unclaimed for the applicable dormancy period, the holder must file a report under Code of Civil Procedure §1530 disclosing the owner’s last known information and the nature and value of the property. This is a separate step from actually remitting the property or funds to the State, and the two happen on different dates.

The rule is not limited to banks and insurers. Any business that holds funds or property owed to another party, and cannot locate that party, is a holder for purposes of this law.

The two filing calendars

California runs two separate calendars depending on what kind of business is reporting.

• Life insurance companies file the notice report before 1 May and remit the property between 1 and 15 December.
• All other businesses file the notice report before 1 November and remit between 1 and 15 June.

Extension requests, if a business needs one, are due no later than 30 days before the report is due, not 30 days before the remittance date. A holder that waits until the reporting deadline to think about an extension has already missed the window to ask for one. (Source: State Controller, holder reporting)

What late reporting actually costs

A holder that fails to report, pay, or deliver unclaimed property on time owes the Controller interest at 12 per cent per annum, calculated from the date the property should have been reported. This is not a flat penalty; it accrues for as long as the property sits unreported, which means the cost of discovering the obligation five years late is materially different from discovering it one year late.

The one exception is a failure due to reasonable cause. What counts as reasonable cause is a legal question, not a business judgment call, and a company facing a large potential interest bill should get advice on that point rather than assume the exception applies.

The Voluntary Compliance Program: how the interest gets waived

California runs a Voluntary Compliance Program specifically for holders who have not been filing, or have been filing incompletely. A business that participates in and completes all of the program’s requirements has that 12 per cent interest waived by the Controller. The program runs year-round; a business does not have to wait for an open enrollment period to apply.

This matters most for companies that only discover the obligation exists after years of ignoring it, which is the common case. The program exists precisely because the State would rather have accurate, complete reporting going forward than punish a company into further avoidance.

What a business should do next

The starting point is an honest look at aged liabilities: uncashed payroll and vendor checks, unrefunded deposits, dormant customer credits, unclaimed rebates. Most accounting systems were not built to flag these for escheatment purposes, so the review is usually manual the first time it is done.

Our business escheatment audit is built for exactly this situation: a company that suspects it may be sitting on reportable property and wants to know its actual exposure, including whether the Voluntary Compliance Program is the right route, before the Controller’s interest clock runs any longer than it already has.

Questions People Ask

Figures on this page are from our copy of the State Controller’s published file as it stood on 6 September 2026. The State republishes the file weekly, so current totals will differ. Search is always against the latest copy.