Do you remember that stimulus check we all got last year? Well, Chuck and I just filed our taxes for 2008 through taxslayer.com (who we highly recommend, btw!) I will now pause briefly for you to enviously admire the awesomeness of our organization and responsibility in getting this dreaded annual chore completed way before April 15.
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Now, are we supposed to imagine it is just coincidence that entering in that stimulus check as "income" reduces our refund by almost exactly the same amount?
I'd be interested to hear if anybody else finds these same results... Feel free to leave a comment.
3 comments:
The economic stimulus checks last year were a prefund of increased credits. For example, the child tax credit, for 2008 taxes only, is $1300 instead of the usual $1000. Look closer at your taxes and you should find that it doesn't reduce your refund at all because of that. It's likely the software is pretending that you didn't receive the check at all and then when it does the recovery rebate credit worksheet it then sees you got the full amount allowed and is reducing your "refund" because of that. It's really not reducing your refund, it's initially artificially inflating your refund and then correcting it. If you do your taxes by hand instead of using the site you'll see how it works.
As for us, we're actually getting $300 more than we normally would have because of the economic stimulus checks. It was based on 2007 filing status and that has changed for us since I had a baby in 2008.
Mine is the same as Heather's. We're getting more b/c we added a child. I'm not sure how it works, but it didn't change our refund amount and we got the added $300 for the additional child.
Feel blessed, we have to pay this year as do most people I know. What's a refund anyway???
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