Over 100,000 Mass. residents could see thousands taken out of their tax refunds (WGBH)
An April 24 WGBH article about unemployment overpayments in Massachusetts quoted Rory MacAneney, Employment Attorney at Community Legal Aid. An excerpt from the article is below.
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For 112,000 residents who were overpaid unemployment benefits in the past few years, the state is coming to collect.
Overpayments are not unusual for unemployment. About 2% of all unemployment payments, or roughly $30 million, were overpayments in Massachusetts in 2019, per the state’s Department of Unemployment Assistance. But chaos in the early days of the pandemic and short-term federal programs — rapidly built, executed and shuttered — made the money owed now at a magnitude that’s anything but normal.
Administrative errors, fraud and confusion about who qualified for new, short-term federal programs led to billions being overpaid. After years of forgiveness efforts slowly whittled down that sum, the department is now trying to get $719 million back from taxpayers on this year’s tax refunds. The 112,000 claimants owe, on average, $6,400 to the federal and state government. Any tax refunds that would be given to a claimant will instead be put toward paying down their debt to the unemployment overpayments.
