FS Form 3062-4: Claiming Savings Bonds You Never Received

From 2010, tax filers could use their tax refund to buy paper Series I savings bonds. If one of those bonds was mailed and never turned up, FS Form 3062-4 is the document Treasury wants. It is a short form with a heavy oath attached, and a few of its rules are easy to miss: who has to sign, which parts you can skip, and why the notary down the street cannot help you.

The form carries OMB number 1530-0048 and runs six pages. This guide follows the April 2026 revision.

Who still needs this form

The tax-refund route is closed. TreasuryDirect’s page on the subject opens with this sentence: “As of January 1, 2025, you are no longer able to buy paper Series I savings bonds with your tax refund.” The page says the Tax Time Savings Bonds program began in 2010, and gives the reason for ending it: “This option was costly and not frequently used. The mailing of physical savings bonds was also subject to fraud, theft, loss, and delays.”

IRS Form 8888 (Rev. December 2025) says the same thing from the other side. Its Reminders section states that the program allowing a refund to be deposited into a TreasuryDirect account to buy savings bonds, “as well as the ability to buy paper bonds with your refund, has been discontinued,” and that Form 8888 is now only used to split a direct deposit refund between two or more accounts.

So nobody can start a new tax-refund purchase. The people who can still need FS Form 3062-4 are those whose paper bond was mailed under the old program, or by any other route, and never arrived. The form itself says nothing about tax refunds. It is a general nonreceipt claim, and the refund link is context from TreasuryDirect and the IRS, not a condition printed on the form.

What you are certifying

The form opens with a certification: the undersigned certify that the bonds described “have not been received, either by me/us, or by anyone on my/our behalf.” There is a second sentence for people who moved: “If the addressee has moved since the bonds were mailed, I/we also certify that an inquiry was made at the former address.” The warning above it is blunt: making any false, fictitious or fraudulent claim or statement to the United States is a crime and may be prosecuted.

Part 7 is the heavier promise. By signing, you petition the Secretary of the Treasury for relief, and if relief is granted you acknowledge that the original securities become the property of the United States. You also bind yourself and your heirs to three things: surrender the original bonds should they come into your possession, hold the United States harmless against any other party’s claim to the bonds, and repay on demand whatever Treasury pays out if the original bonds are later redeemed, including interest, administrative costs and penalties. The signature is made “under penalty of perjury.”

Walking through the parts

Part 1, description of bonds. Give the issue date, face amount, bond number and inscription for each bond. If you do not have serial numbers, the instructions say you must provide the exact issue date or a range of dates, and the Social Security Number, name (including middle name or initial) and complete address (street, city, state) that appear on the bonds, plus the total number of missing bonds. The form adds a rule for gifts: “If a bond was received as a gift, provide the purchaser’s Social Security Number.” When one page is not enough, attach a plain sheet of paper or FS Form 3500, the continuation sheet for listing securities.

Part 2, details of the purchase. The purchaser’s name and Social Security Number.

Part 3, authority. If you are named on the bonds, skip to Part 4. If not, describe your authority (parent, guardian, conservator, legal representative, administrator, executor and the like) and say whether you were court appointed.

Part 4, minors. Complete this only if a minor is named on the bonds. It asks for the minor’s name, date of birth and Social Security Number, your relationship to the minor, with whom the minor lives, who provides the minor’s chief support, and whether both parents can sign. The instructions say a minor without a court-appointed guardian who is requesting payment, or who is named on Series HH bonds, may sign on his or her own behalf if, in the certifying officer’s opinion, he or she is competent enough to understand the transaction. The parents or parent with whom the minor lives must complete the item if the minor is not competent enough to complete the form alone, or is requesting electronic substitute bonds for Series EE or Series I. If the minor lives with neither parent, the person who furnishes the minor’s chief support completes and signs.

Part 5, relief requested. You choose substitute bonds or payment. Part 6 then collects either a TreasuryDirect account number and account name (for electronic bonds) or bank routing and account details (for direct deposit).

Substitute bonds or payment

Part 5 is where the practical decisions sit, and the instructions set several limits:

• For Series EE and Series I bonds, “we no longer issue substitute bonds in paper form.” Substitutes arrive in electronic form in TreasuryDirect, so you give a TreasuryDirect account number; if you have no account, the form says you may open one at treasurydirect.gov.
• Series EE and Series I bonds issued February 2003 and later are not eligible for payment until one full year after issue. If you ask for payment on a bond less than a year old, substitute bonds are issued instead.
• If you request substitute bonds and a bond is within less than one full calendar month of final maturity, or has reached it, payment is made instead.
• Series HH bonds: substitutes are no longer issued. They have all reached final maturity and can only be paid by direct deposit.

If you do ask for electronic replacements, the form carries a tax warning on page 2. When a living owner or principal coowner is dropped from the registration, that person must report the previously unreported interest to the date of the transaction on his or her federal return for the year of the reissue. In the form’s own capitals: “THE OBLIGATION TO REPORT THE INTEREST CANNOT BE TRANSFERRED TO SOMEONE ELSE THROUGH A REISSUE TRANSACTION.” For how the two series differ before you choose, see our comparison of Series I and Series EE bonds.

The signature rule: certifying officer, not notary

Part 7 says to “Sign in ink in the presence of a certifying officer and provide the requested information.” The instructions go further. Each person whose signature is required must appear before an authorized certifying officer and establish identification to the officer’s satisfaction, and the signatures must be made in the officer’s presence. The officer must affix the seal or stamp used when certifying requests for payment. Authorized officers are available at financial institutions, including credit unions, in the United States. Then the sentence that trips people up: “Certification by a notary isn’t acceptable.”

Acceptable marks, according to the form, include the financial institution’s official seal or stamp (a Signature Guaranteed stamp, an Endorsement Guaranteed stamp, a corporate seal, or an issuing or paying agent stamp showing name, location and a four-digit identification number or nine-digit routing number) and the stamp of a Treasury-recognized Signature Guarantee Program or other Treasury-approved Medallion Program. The certifying officer’s block asks for the names of the people who appeared and the date of appearance.

Not every Treasury form works this way. FS Form 1048, for bonds that were lost, stolen or destroyed, can be signed before a notary or a certifying officer. Our separate table shows which savings bond forms accept a notary and which require a certifying officer.

Who signs and what to attach

The instructions say the form “must be completed and signed by all persons named on the bonds, or by an authorized representative.” Two kinds of documents may need to travel with it:

• Proof of death. If a registrant is deceased, include a certified copy of the official death certificate.
• Legal representative papers. If you were appointed because the owner died with no surviving coowner or beneficiary named, or the owner or coowner is a minor or incapacitated, submit a court certificate or certified copy of your letters of appointment, under court seal and dated within one year of submission, showing the appointment is still in full force. If your name and official capacity appear in the bond registration, evidence of appointment is not necessary. If no representative has been appointed for a deceased or incompetent owner, the instructions say to advise the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, and additional instructions will be provided.

The disaster shortcut

The first line of the instructions is the one worth knowing in advance: “IF YOU LIVE IN A DECLARED DISASTER AREA: You need to complete only parts 1, 5, and 7. Write the word ‘DISASTER’ on the top of the first page of the form and on the front of the envelope.” That drops parts 2, 3, 4 and 6 from your to-do list. The instructions do not say how Treasury handles payment or delivery without the Part 6 details. Part 7, which you still complete, asks each signer for a mailing address, a daytime telephone number and an email address.

Where FS Form 2243 fits

FS Form 3062-4 starts the claim. FS Form 2243, the supplemental statement, is a follow-up whose items refer back to “the original application.” TreasuryDirect’s forms page lists it as support for a claim made on FS Form 1048 or FS Form 3062-4, and its own instructions describe its purpose as supporting an application for relief on account of “the loss, theft, destruction, or nonreceipt” of securities. One difference is worth knowing: unlike this form, the FS Form 2243 PDF allows a notary as well as a certifying officer. TreasuryDirect’s forms page, however, tells you to sign it “in the presence of a certifying individual,” so a certifying officer at a bank or credit union satisfies both. If your bonds were lost, stolen or destroyed after you received them, the right starting point is FS Form 1048 rather than this form.

Mailing it

Send the form and any additional information to Treasury Retail Securities Services, PO Box 9150, Minneapolis, MN 55480-9150. The form warns that legal evidence or documentation you submit cannot be returned, so send copies of anything you want to keep. For questions, the form lists SavBonds@fiscal.treasury.gov, the toll-free number 844-284-2676 and fax 612-629-4285. It estimates about 10 minutes to complete and states no processing time, so we cannot tell you how long a claim takes.

Sources

• Bureau of the Fiscal Service, FS Form 3062-4, “Claim for United States Savings Bonds Not Received” (Revised April 2026): treasurydirect.gov/forms/sav3062-4.pdf
• TreasuryDirect, “Using Your Income Tax Refund to Buy Paper Savings Bonds”: treasurydirect.gov/research-center/faq-irs-tax-feature/
• IRS, Form 8888, Allocation of Refund (Rev. December 2025): irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f8888.pdf
• Bureau of the Fiscal Service, FS Form 2243, Supplemental Statement for United States Securities (Revised April 2026): treasurydirect.gov/forms/sav2243.pdf
• TreasuryDirect, “Savings Bond Forms” (forms index with signing requirements): treasurydirect.gov/savings-bonds/forms/