Tax Refunds & Advice

As you may have seen in the news, the IRS spent more than $40 million sending letters pertaining to the Economic Stimulus Act of 2008. Approximately 130 million letters are being sent to people who filed a return in 2006. This does not include many more letters that need to be sent to people who did not file a return in 2006, but may still qualify for a rebate. As you can see, the IRS is putting a lot of time into making sure that tax payers are aware of how the rebate process will progress.

Of course, there are quite a few people who are not happy about spending this much money on these letters. For instance, Senator Charles Schumer said, “There are countless better uses for $42 million than a self-congratulatory mailer that gives the president a pat on the back for an idea that wasn’t even his.”

On the other side of things, president of the National Economic Council, Keith Hennessey said, “Any time you do something as a government tens of millions of times, there is ample room for people to get confused. And so if you’re going to have tens of millions of taxpayers getting checks, you want to get the information out so that you have as few people as possible confused about what’s happening, they understand what’s coming, and it reduces the number of incoming requests that IRS and Treasury have to figure out how to deal with it.”

No matter how you feel about the money that was spent on these letters, there is a good chance that you will be receiving a rebate of at least $300 this summer. As the letter states, to receive a rebate you do not have to do anything more than file a return for 2007. From there, the IRS will sort out who receives a rebate as well as how much.

For now, all you can do is sit back and wait for your rebate to arrive in the mail.