Taxation & Estate Planning

Still Waiting on your Economic Stimulus Check?

By Darrin Mish

Recently I was contacted by WFLA-TV Channel 8 in Tampa, Florida to be interviewed about a common problem that many taxpayers are facing. They?re not receiving their Economic Stimulus Package Checks on schedule. The clip from the newscast is at the bottom of this blog post.

The gist of the problem is that if you paid a tax preparation firm like H.R. Block or Jackson-Hewitt and you had the tax preparation fees withheld from your refund or you used tax preparation software like TurboTax, it appears that your Economic Stimulus Check will be delayed.

My take on the problem is that Congress and the President in their haste to get the money out to taxpayers to stimulate the economy simply didn?t pay enough attention to how to get the checks out. In defense of the IRS (which is very rare for me), they didn?t get a lot of notice before the bill was passed into law. Additionally, President Bush?s economic advisers indicated to him that in order to have much effect on the economy the Economic Stimulus Package Checks had to go out sooner rather than later. As soon as possible to be exact.

So there you have it. I hope you received your check. If not, the reason might be who you chose to prepare your taxes. I think the really good news is that you WILL eventually get your Economic Stimulus Package Check, it just might take longer than you thought.

Full post as published by IRS Problem Solver Blog on May 23, 2008 (boomark / email).