By Brian Massie, A Watchman on the Wall
We would like to thank a Lake County concerned citizen for following up with the Lake County Treasurer Michael Zuren on the status of the overpayment of property taxes by Lake County residents. Here is the response the concerned citizen received from Treasurer Zuren:
“The current balance of the surplus account is $3,892,738. All the payments have been researched. We are waiting to apply or refund the overpayments from 1983 to 1989 until after the first-half collection closes. At that point (end of February), the prosecutor’s office will be notified and asked to notify the commissioner’s of the balance available to be sent to the general fund.”
Lake County Treasurer Michael Zuren
We wrote an article back in 2021 after doing some research on the County’s fund balances. We found over $6 million in taxpayers funds that had not been returned to their rightful owners.
“Account number 894 is titled “Surplus Over” and as of April 30, 2021 totaled $5,324,376.05. “This fund is the accumulation of overages of tax payments through the Treasurer’s Office on various parcels of real estate for various reasons.”
“Account number 803 is titled “Unclaimed Monies” and as of April 30, 2021 totaled $735,359.71. This is an account that is monitored by the Auditor’s office and the monies accumulated in this account are ‘unclaimed funds after a county department or an estate cannot locate the beneficiaries of the estate’.”
This means that Treasurer Zuren has returned $1,431,638.05 to date to the taxpayers. Thank you Treasurer Zuren. It is unknown how much from 1983 – 1989 time period will be returned to the taxpayers.
Here is the original article that we wrote back on July 21, 2021 where we highlighted the problem for the Commissioners.
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Categories: Lake County - General, Lake County Cities & Townships, Uncategorized