BATON ROUGE – The state appears to have started automatically drafting mistakenly-paid tax refunds from bank accounts.

Thursday, the state revealed it paid tax refunds twice to tens of thousands of taxpayers. As many as 66,000 received duplicate tax return payouts in error.

Friday, some people who noticed two deposits found a transaction showing an automatic withdrawal of the duplicated amount.

In all, the state estimated the duplicated returns total around $26 million.

The state warned Thursday people should not spend the amount of the duplicate deposit and that banks were contacted in order to reverse the duplicate deposits.

“There is no need for the taxpayers to take any action as the department works to recover the overpayment of funds directly from their bank accounts,” Commissioner of Administration Jay Dardenne said in a statement. “With the cooperation of several financial institutions, the process is working.”

State tax officials said they would release specific information about handling the return of duplicate tax refunds later Friday.  WBRZ has asked, specifically, how the state or banks would handle overdrafts of accounts where inattentive taxpayers already spent both refunds.