Tax Refund Offsets

Ohio laws require the Ohio Department of Taxation to withhold all or part of an individual’s state individual tax refund if delinquent taxes are owed to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office.

In addition, State of Ohio individual tax refunds may be held or offset and applied to delinquent accounts owed to miscellaneous State of Ohio agencies. State of Ohio tax refunds may be offset as long as any delinquent account has a balance due, regardless of repayment status. If you have recently remitted payment in full for a delinquent account certified to the Ohio Attorney General or if the refund results in an overpayment of the account listed on the letter you received from the Ohio Department of Taxation, the balance of the overpayment may be applied to any remaining delinquent accounts certified to Ohio Attorney General’s Office. If no other delinquent accounts owed to any State of Ohio agency are certified, any overpayment will be refunded. Refunds are processed by the Ohio Attorney General in approximately 6-8 weeks. If you wish to make arrangements on any remaining amount due, please allow two weeks for your offset refund to be applied and your balance updated. If your letter from the Ohio Department of Taxation has a dollar amount in the Amount Due You line, that amount will be forwarded to you by the Ohio Department of Taxation.

Also, federal income tax refunds, including the economic stimulus rebate payments, may be offset for State of Ohio individual income tax assessments only. The U. S. Treasury Offset Program is a federally sponsored and federally operated program pursuant to which federal individual income tax refunds are intercepted and paid to the participating state as full or partial satisfaction of the individual’s tax liabilities to that state.

You may contact the Ohio Attorney General’s office at (877) 607-6400 regarding tax refund offsets. Please have the Notice of Proposed Income Tax Refund Offset letter available when you call.

If you have any other questions regarding the collection activities of the Ohio Attorney General's Office, please refer to our Frequently Asked Questions page.