California Franchise Tax Board review: Withholding money due, that was wrongfully taken

In Apr. 2013, The Ca. Franchise Tax Board put a lien on my husbands bank acct. They ended up deducting a total of $6, 800.00+ from his acct. When he called to find out what he had to do to get the funds returned, he was told he just needed to file his taxes. Well, this is easier said than done. My husband is a self-employed carpenter. After the economic crash, work wasn't as plentiful. His taxes are complicated, time consuming and costly to do. The funds that the tax board took, weren't technically his. They were for supplies for a job he was to complete. Needless to say, it was quite the struggle to repay that amount, for us.
He was told on several occasions, from the tax board, that the money would be returned, as soon as he did his taxes. We scrimped and saved and finally had the money to get our taxes done, in Oct. 2014. He needed to do several years. We have never "owed" anything after filing previous taxes.
The Tax Board received the information in Nov. 2014. We contacted them several times, and were told "we just have to wait." So this has been going on for about 5 mos. We were told they did release the lien, but couldn't tell us when we would get our money back. After a few more disappointing calls, trying to find out when we would be getting the money they took from us (that we proved we did not owe) back, we were told that we wouldn't be getting that money back. That there is a statute of limitations of a year, and we exceeded that time by a few months?!? Never once mentioned this little tidbit, during any of our conversations, in fact, at one point they tried to get us to send them another $170 in order to release the money they owed us?! They said it was a late filing fee! We didn't owe them anything. So now we're being told that we basically forfeit that money! Unbelievable.
We were in a situation, that made it difficult to act in a timely manner! The California Franchise Tax Board exacerbated that difficulty, immensely, when they stole the money from our bank.