CHICAGO – Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas on Wednesday announced a new effort to use the Internet to help 26,000 taxpayers recover $41 million in property-tax overpayments.

"By clicking on the new Duplicate and Overpayment section of the Cook County Treasurer's world wide web site, www.cookcountytreasurer.com, taxpayers can check the property index number or numbers that they own now or recently owned to see if they made an overpayment in the last year," Pappas said.

Of the 26,210 duplicate and overpayments for a total of $40.59 million on 2000 taxes collected in 2001:

• 14,120 were $10 to $1,000;
• 11,150 were $1,001 to $5,000;
• 647 were $5,001 to $10,000;
• 262 were $10,001 to $50,000;
• 16 were $50,001 to $100,000; and
• 15 were $100,001 to $526,782.

"These overpayments and duplicate payments occur because some people pay twice or simply submit the wrong amount," Pappas said.

Taxpayers who find an overpayment should follow instructions to file for a refund using the application form that can be downloaded from the web site. The form requires the applicant to supply proof to show that he or she was the person who made the payments or was responsible for making the payments through escrow.

"This is geared especially to help taxpayers whose overpayments were made by third-party payers, such as mortgage companies during a refinancing or at a property transfer," Pappas said.

Another goal of the program is to help taxpayers avoid fraud by those who pose as county workers and ask taxpayers to sign over parts of their refunds in exchange for help pursuing the refunds. "With this system, we hope that taxpayers who receive solicitations can easily check the Internet to find the overpayment easily, even where they owned multiple properties with various third-party payers," Pappas said.