Ohio's tax department says it will start alerting businesses when they've overpaid taxes and help them reclaim their money.

Previously, if businesses failed to discover the error in paying their commercial activities tax within a certain time frame, they lost the right to reclaim it.

Gov. John Kasich and tax Commissioner Joe Testa announced the policy change Tuesday.

They said the Ohio Department of Taxation will begin notifying about 3,500 taxpayers who may have overpaid by a total of up to $13.7 million.

The commercial activities tax is Ohio's primary business tax. It generated $1.65 billion in the last budget year that ended in June.

The oil and gas boom has brought in lots of activity to eastern Ohio, and perhaps lots of out of state workers. Statehouse correspondent Karen Kasler reports says that’s a problem for the governor.

Gov. John Kasich has joked several times about the people he wants to see working with the oil and gas industry in Ohio, including in his State of the State speech in February.

“…and with the energy companies I told them, we don’t want foreigners working on our well heads, those are people from West Virginia, Indiana, Michigan and Oklahoma, okay? We want Ohioans on the well head,” said Kasich in the February speech.

But Kasich now says he’s concerned that out of state employees are being brought in to work with the drillers. 

Ohio's Republican senator sees tax reforms, not letting taxes go up, as the way to ease the nation's fiscal crunch.

Rob Portman says he thinks higher tax rates now for any group would be a mistake. But he says tax changes could be part of a plan that adds revenue while reducing federal spending.

Portman talked with reporters Thursday as Congress and the Barack Obama administration are trying to avoid a year-end "fiscal cliff" that would see tax cuts expire while spending cuts kick in.

Portman was on the congressional deficit "supercommittee" last year that tried to come up with a fix to the fiscal crisis. He supports "pro-growth" tax reforms and spending cutbacks.

About 55,000 Ohioans among the long-term unemployed are expected to lose jobless benefits soon because of the end of federally funded aid initiated several years ago.