CONWAY, SC (WBTW) – The Horry County Treasurer’s office has distributed nearly $80,000 of $345,000 owed to taxpayers in refund checks.

The Horry County Treasuer’s office published a list of more than 1,000 taxpayers eligible for tax refunds from 2014 to 2016, two weeks ago. Treasurer Angie Jones said in the last eight days, the county has given back about $80,000. She said people have been pouring into the treasurer’s office to pick up their refund checks, after seeing their names on the list.

According to Jones, the Treasurer’s office was in possession of refund checks dating back to 1984. However, all checks older than five years must be sent to the state treasurer’s office, which has published a list of people eligible for refunds from 2013 or prior on its own website. “When you look at money sitting in an office from 1984, if you don’t put it out somewhere people don’t know that it’s owed to them. This is not Horry County money. This is money that belongs to the taxpayers of this county,” said Jones.

“I thought that it was really a Christmas miracle. You don’t normally think about the tax office calling you and saying, we have money to give back to you,” said Phyllis Elvington. She didn’t know the Horry County government owed her money until her friend and her sister told her she was on a list of about 1,000 taxpayers eligible for a refund. Elvington said, “I thought, this might be a joke. But I said, ‘I’ll make a phone call and see.’”

Sure enough, the Horry County Treasurer’s office had a check waiting for Elvington, for $393.82. “It was awesome. I needed that at Christmas time so that was really really a blessing,” she said.

Jones said not only does the county get behind on sending the refund checks, but taxpayers often forget to look for the money they’re owed. “Well I would definitely say it was behind,” she said. “The checks had been mailed but they had just been sitting in a box after they’d come back for whatever reason.”

Elvington already knows what she wants to spend her refund on – repairing parts of her home that were destroyed during Hurricane Matthew. “For Christmas, I was going to try to give my husband a deck back where the cookhouse was. I was going to use that money to be able to help him build the deck back from the flood.”