I got a check in the mail today, from the US Treasury, for $4,000.
I have no idea why - the check says 12/2023 tax refund, but AFAIK, I owed taxes for 2023.
I’m going to deposit it, but I would guess that I’m going to owe it again at some point.
$4,000 also sounds like an unusually tidy sum - too much so. I’d wonder if it were even legit.
A messy sum like $3,867.43 would be more believable.
That being said, I have also had pleasant surprises before where I thought I owed something big but got something big in refunds.
I got a surprising refund too, but for a “messy” amount. Maybe the OP was rounding?
Fake check scam? Pretty well known.
It has both my name and my wife’s name on it, looks like a real check, and has the US Treasury watermark.
Is it a leftover COVID payment they forgot to send you. I recall those being tidy sums. Can’t remember how much they were for.
Did it come with an explanatory letter? Our refund did.
Nope. Just a check in an envelope.
So, I can see it being a mistake, which means I won’t plan on spending it, but I can’t see how if could be any kind of scam - nobody is asking me to refund them any money (unless that comes later, in which case I’ll tell them to pound sand).
I would sign into my IRS.gov account and see what info they have.
Sometimes “tidy sums” occur just because you hit the maximum on some entitlement, like my property tax rebate which is always exactly $500 because that’s all the government will pay even though my actual property taxes are many times that amount.
Around here an income tax refund comes with a complete statement about how your taxes were assessed, but individual rebates, grants, and other such things are often just a cheque with nothing else enclosed, though a statement of what the cheque is for is usually annotated on the cheque itself. But I’m not in the US and have never been paid anything by the US government! 
If it’s anything like “MyAccount” here in Canada, there’s a huge wealth of information about pretty much everything, including all the cheques that have been issued or will be issued.
Wait for the phone call. “The US mint wants their money back…in ApplePay gift cards…”
This is getting interesting. Didn’t we have a thread a while ago about someone receiving a possibly suspect check and wanting to deposit it? I think I recall a lot of discussion over whether depositing a check that one suspects might be fake opens a person up to fraud charges, and can the bank be counted on to identify if the check is fake, etc.
That was a good idea, but I couldn’t find any indication of why it was sent on that site.
Well, it’s a real check.
The Warningx3 at the bottom of your link is scary.
Jeez.
Then enjoy the unexpected windfall!
I had a similar situation recently. I logged into my account and they had a section under notices I think. I found a letter in there explaining what my refund was for. So I deposited the check.
Have you filed your taxes for 2023 yet?
It seems highly likely that you are a victim of identity theft. Back in 2020, my in-laws got a check for their 2019 tax refund, for something like 7,000 dollars.
Only, they had not filed a return for that year (did not need to).
Most likely scenario is one where a scammer files using your info, and either has the money deposited into their account instead, or it goes to you, then the scammer calls “I’m from the IRS. You got an incorrect refund and you need to pay it back NOW. And here’s how…”.
By the time the REAL IRS gets back to you asking for their money, you’ve already sent it to the scammer.
My in-laws wanted to deposit that check. Like, really, really, REALLY wanted to deposit it. My husband and I were literally yelling at FIL on the phone to not deposit it, because he simply would not give up on it. We finally had MIL take it away and tear it up.
They still periodically get nag notices from the IRS about this refund and needing to repay it. But, since they never cashed the check, the bank that issued it (which was affiliated with Intuit, actually) should have returned the money long since.
Long story short: check carefully before you deposit that check, and if you get a demand to repay it, make DAMN sure you know who you’re really repaying.
Yes, I filed my taxes on 4/15, and the IRS.GOV site linked above didn’t show anything out of the ordinary. I’m going to deposit it, and just wait to see if some explanation surfaces.
Oh yeah: when we were going through their papers last year as we closed out their condo, we found the file of IRS stuff. They had gotten at least one additional check (for a much smaller amount) that they never told us about. At least it doesn’t look like they tried to deposit that one. There may well have been a third; the 7K check was in the file, but MIL swore she’d torn up and discarded the original one…