What the hell is it? I can’t figure it out.
Remember several years back when everybody got a check to “stimulate the economy”? I do, and I also remember do my taxes the next year and having to subtract that money from my refund. So I wasn’t getting more money from the government, I was getting money that I was going to get anyway when I filed my taxes. I got a cash advance. I guess that’s nice, but I don’t think that is what it was sold as, and I was disappointed not to get a refund at the normal time.
So now they are doing it again. But I can’t figure out if it’s the same thing. They are going to give me some money. Hooray. When I do my 2008 taxes, am I going to have to subtract this, like I did last time? Or, is the government sending me some of the money I’ve already paid in taxes back? That’s what a “rebate” is.  That’s what they are calling it. But I think they called the last one a rebate too. Obviously, a rebate of “money that has already left my pocket that I wasn’t supposed to get back” is preferable just “getting money I was already entitled to sooner.” (From the point of view of my finances, of course, not the US government’s.)
If anyone can figure it out, please let me know. I can’t figure it out from reading the text of the bill, and my Google-fu is failing me.
The question is: “Is the new tax rebate free money from the government or is it an early refund check?”
you know as well as anyone that there is no such thing as “free money”
In all seriousness,
call the IRS hotline and ask them?
Ditto what John said…There is no free money, especially from the government. I am still waiting for them to ask for the FEMA money back. Wait til the Senate gets through with their shinnigans and they revamp the whole thing!