Arizona Department of Revenue audit reveals it has $17M in overpaid taxes waiting to be claimed
PHOENIX - FOX 10 has uncovered Arizona's Department of Revenue has assembled a task force to fix a multi-million dollar problem. An audit revealed $17,000,000 in unclaimed property can’t be searched for by taxpayers.
It’s not known when the department will fix the computer issue, but it wants to solve it fast so it doesn’t continue to happen next tax season.
It may feel like a gift to see your name on unclaimed property website, but it’s your money out there in the world waiting for you to claim it.
Now, more than 46,000 Arizona taxpayers are unable to collect their money due to a computer issue.
According to an auditor general report, an issue with the 20-year-old computer system is preventing $17 million in overpayments from being searched on the unclaimed property portal.
That’s an average of almost $400 per person.
"The department does not take this situation lightly," said Ed Greenberg with the Department of Revenue, adding, "It is a priority to clear up the back log."
A task force was created to solve this issue as quickly as possible.
Greenberg said this specific issue is for people that paid too much in taxes, but the department is unable to return the money to the taxpayer because they can’t find them and then the computer system runs into an issue.
"The file isn’t automatically transferred to the unclaimed property area of the department," Greenberg said.
On top of the task force, Greenberg says they’re looking at getting a new computer system in the long term.
In the short term, the department looking at possibly manually moving the $17 million into unclaimed property so this issue doesn’t happen again in the future.
Greenberg stressed the computer system largely works but runs into occasional issues like this one.
"The auditor generals finding brought to light the extent of this matter," Greenberg explained.
If you give the department a call, they’ll try to manually search to see if you're one of the 46,000 owed tax overpayments.