Where’s My Tax Rebate?

 As the electronic payouts for the rebate are complete, you may be asking your self “I was supposed to get mine via direct deposit, but didn’t, what’s up?”.

Well it seems that now more details are coming forward about the rebates. I have just found out that when you filed, if you elected to have your tax preparation fees taken out of your refund, rather then paying for them seperately, you will be receiving your rebate via a paper check, even though your refund was through direct deposit. Check the Payout Schedule to see when your check might arrive.

Another issue that has arose is that around 350,000 people were missing the $300 per child payment as part of their rebate. This was an error for people that used commercial tax preparation software such as TurboTax or TaxCut. The IRS will be issuing letters to those people to let them know of the error. Checks for the $300 per child will be issued in July to those affected.

Be sure to use the Rebate Status Tool to check the status of your rebate if you haven’t received it yet. Also, be sure to review your rebate and make sure it is the correct amount that you are expecting. With some of the glitches we have seen thus far, it is possible that more could be uncovered.

Avoid Stimulus Rebate Scams

So as usual, along with the good of the 2008 Rebate Stimulus, so comes the bad. Including those that want to swindle your money from you.

I have been reading about an email scam that looks similiar to the following:

Over 130 million Americans will receive refunds as part of President Bush program to jumpstart the economy.

Our records indicate that you are qualified to receive the 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund.

The fastest and easiest way to receive your refund is by direct deposit to your checking/savings account.

Please follow the link and fill out the form and submit before May 10th, 2008 to ensure that your refund will be processed as soon as possible.

Submitting your form on May 10th, 2008 or later means that your refund will be delayed due to the volume of requests we anticipate for the Economic Stimulus Refund.

To access Economic Stimulus refund, please click here

This is a ploy to get you to enter your bank account info so that some one can use that information to start debiting money out of your account. Don’t ever enter personal information through anything that you have received via email. Even if the link in the email looks correct.

Always enter the url by hand into the browser, such as www.irs.gov as an example. These scammers wouldn’t still be doing scams like this if people weren’t falling for it, so be smart and if you have questions about emails that you get, contact the instution by phone first and verify that the email was valid.

Check The Status of Your 2008 Tax Rebate

The IRS has released a new tool that lets you check on the status of your 2008 tax rebate. For those of you that thought you should have received your rebate but didn’t, you definitely need to try this.

Click Here for the IRS Rebate Status Tool

You will need three things from your tax return to use this tool:

• Your Social Security Number
• Your Filing Status
• The number of Exemptions (Note: This is not the number of deductions)

Make sure you are accurate with these as I noticed that incorrectly putting in the number of exemptions on mine yielded an error. So if you get an error, double check a copy of the return you submitted.

Note that specific information about your Stimulus Payment will not be available until about one week before the payment is scheduled to be issued.

However if you think you should have already received yours based on the payment schedule, this tool should help.

Here is an example of mine so you can get an idea of what data you will see:


(Click on the thumbnail for a larger picture)

Hopefully this will answer a lot of your questions.

Make Money on Your Tax Rebate Stimulus Check II

Adding to my earlier post about retailers that are giving you a bonus to spend your tax rebate check with them, here are a few more:

Supervalue Inc – Bonus Information
Supervalue is giving a 10% bonus on top of your rebate amount if you exchange your rebate for gift cards to their following stores: Acme, Albertsons, bigg’s, Cub Foods, Farm Fresh, Hornbacher’s, Jewel-Osco, Lucky, Shaw’s/Star Market, Shop ‘n Save and Shoppers Food & Pharmacy.

Radio Shack – Bonus Information
Radio Shack is giving 10% off of a $50 purchase when you use your rebate check to pay for your purchase.

I imagine we are going to see more of these pop up as time goes on, but can someone answer my only question? How about us folks that are getting the rebate check direct deposited? Any bonus love for us?

Tax Rebates to Arrive Sooner Than Planned

According to the IRS, after implementing a special software program that updates records faster, they will start distributing tax rebates via direct deposit on Monday April 28th – five days earlier than expected. They didn’t say that if it is only the rebates that were supposed to be sent on May 2nd will be sent early, or if is shifts the whole Rebate Payout Schedule up a week.

Rebates to taxpayers slated to get paper checks will start to go out on May 9 – one week earlier than originally planned. Again, I am not sure if this is just those rebates from May 16th that will go out early, or if everything will be a week earlier than planned.

The IRS has not updated its Rebate Payout Schedule on their site to reflect this news, so don’t get too excited yet. I just thought I would relay this info so that for you guys getting the rebate via direct deposit, you may see a large deposit sooner than expected. So keep an eye out for it.

Leave it to the government to make last minute changes and not fully explain how it is going to work!

Make Money on Your Tax Rebate Stimulus Check

Eager to take your rebate money from you, there are a few retailers willing to give you a percentage bonus if you trade in your rebate at their store for gift cards.

Here are the few I know so far:

Sears will give you a 10% bonus on your rebate if you trade in your tax stimulus check for a Sears gift card. This includes KMart and Lands Ends stores as well. So for example if you have a $1200 check, if you would get a total of $1320 on a Sears Gift card. ($1200 rebate + $120 10% bonus). Definitely a good deal if you are going to by appliances or a large ticket item

According to this Press Release you just need to take your rebate check to a Sears or KMart cash register to redeem the rebate check for a gift card. You must redeem the entire amount of the rebate check into a gift card to get the 10% bonus. This promotion lasts from May 14 to July 19, 2008

The Kroger Grocery Store Chain is also giving customers a 10% bonus for redeeming their tax rebate for gift cards. The program allows Kroger customers to exchange their tax refund or economic stimulus checks for a Kroger gift card with an extra $30.00, $60.00 or $120.00 added to it. Here is how they are dealing with the issue if your rebate check is not in a $300, $600, or $1200 increment.

Amounts that differ from those outlined above will be turned into gift cards in $300.00, $600.00 or $1,200.00 increments with the bonus amounts added on and the remainder returned to the customer. For example, if a customer has a tax refund or stimulus check of $415.50, the customer will receive a Kroger gift card valued at $330.00 and the remaining $115.50 will be returned to the customer.

Kroger customers who are interested in exchanging their refunds or economic stimulus checks should present their check and customer loyalty card at their local store’s Customer Service center from May 2, 2008 through July 31, 2008. The program is limited to one offer per household with a limit of $1,200.00.See Kroger’s Press Release for more info.

So if you were planning on spending that rebate check anyway, this might be an option if you are willing to spend it all at one store, cause hey, in the end this is free money on top of free money!!! Please beware of the gift card polices in your area as some may expire or lose vale over time. I imagine that many other stores will be offering something like this as many do for tax refunds in April every year. I will try to update as I find more. Please leave a comment if you know of any large retailers that are offering this bonus for your tax rebate check.

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