Not true.

I only got $300. That is where having an income of only $5,700 (I only had 4 months of taxable income in '07) didn't work in my advantage.

 

I can tell you she didn't make any where near 75,000. She's lucky if she made 20,000. At 8 an hour with no overtime and single, not a whole lot of money coming in. Good enough I guess for someone with hardly no bills and no rent.

 

deadmeat, maybe she ended up owing money and they subtracted what she owed fromt he 600?

 

She probably claimed 1 on her w-4's. Which is smart. I have guys on the payroll that claim 0 so they can get a refund check at the end of the year. I try my best to tell/show them that, since the irs pays no interest, they would be better off claiming themselves and as many dependants as possible, putting the money in the bank each check, and blowing it plus the interest at the same time they would normally get thier refund check. It usually falls on deaf ears though. There are on-line banks (like ing) that pay 5% with no minimum balance.

 

The refund is based on your total tax liability, block 37 on the 1040A, I think. If you are single, the MAX is $600, but if your "tax" amount (liability) is less than $600, that's what you get. Same for married...if your liability is less, you get that amount, with a MAX of $1200. We got $879, and it went straight to a credit card bill.

 

Thats what they predicted most Americans would do with it, send it straight to the CC bill. Which is not what its designed for, as doing that doesn't help the economy in any way. No offense, I just think it shouldn't be entirely spent on CCs. Use at least part of it for what it was designed for. My two cents.

dedmeat1, maybe she didn't make enough then. Or like Tim said, her liability might have been too little.

 

The thing is that when people have a freshly payed off 0$ balance credit card, it starts to burn and itch at them. Just ask my wife. A lot of people have become so used to defecit spending that they only wake up when the som'bitch is maxed out. The staff economists who have input into these decisions reallize that all of the money won't find it's way into the fluid economy. One of my buddies is a hardcore democrat. he said that he was going to screw Bush by investing his refund directly into a mutual fund or cd. I just laughed. The only thing you can really do with the money so that it does not affect the economy in some way is to burry it in a mason jar in your back yard. The sad thing is that they arenot giving out life changing money. They are giving us enough to dick with, while the powers that be(financial institutions and such) will see a small windfall.