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Under the law enacted in February, most people who paid federal income taxes were eligible to receive as much as $600 for an individual, or as much as $1,200 for a married couple filing a joint return, with an additional $300 for each eligible child. The amounts phase out for individuals whose incomes exceed $75,000 and for joint filers with incomes above $150,000. Under the formula, you lose 5% of the dollar amount above the applicable threshold -- such as $50 for each $1,000 above the cap. (Separately, many low-income people who paid little or no federal income tax were entitled to some payment, too.)
Through October, the Treasury had distributed about 117.4 million economic-stimulus payments totaling more than $95 billion. During October alone, the government distributed about 1.4 million payments totaling about $976.6 million.
The IRS has posted tools on its Web site to help people figure the recovery rebate credit, says Eric Smith, an IRS spokesman. There will also be a worksheet to help figure out the amount in the 2008 tax packages, he says.
For those do-it-yourselfers who don't want to risk losing their sanity doing the number-crunching, consider buying tax-preparation software. Intuit's TurboTax, the top-selling consumer software, will automatically notify customers about this issue when they're working on their 2008 tax returns, and will calculate any additional rebate amount, says Julie Miller, an Intuit spokeswoman.
Some people who were eligible for a payment this year haven't received it yet because of a wrong address. (See "Is the IRS holding a check for you?") The IRS said recently that it's searching for people who are missing more than 279,000 economic stimulus checks totaling about $163 million -- and more than 104,000 regular refund checks totaling about $103 million -- that were returned by the Postal Service due to mailing address errors.
Published Jan. 7, 2009
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