My wife and I file our tax return electronically in early April every year. When a refund is due, we receive it by electronic deposit within a matter of a few days, and when we owe money (as we did this year) we mail a check.
When we did not receive our "stimulus" payment according to the schedule for electronic payment I called to inquire and was told that we would be paid by check, not by direct deposit, since we had paid our tax by check. That seemed idiotic to me, since we filed the return electronically and since writing the check and mailing it has to be more costly than making the electronic deposit, but... We are dealing with the Federal Government here. The person told me that based on my social security number the check would be mailed on or before May 30th.
Well, we are still unstimulated, so I called again. I got a recorded message saying that they are "experiencing extremely heavy traffic" and are unable to handle my call. So I looked up the number of my local office and called it. I got a recorded message saying that the office does "not provide live telephone service" and directed me to the main 800 number for the IRS. The main IRS number has one of those voice menus that tells me to press a number for "tax rebate" questions and, upon doing so, I am referred to the line that is currently overloaded.
I am now stimulated, but not economically.
Update: Tuesday, 1:15pm
I got through to an automated system which invited me to punch in my ss number and other data. A recorded message then informed me that my stimulation was scheduled to be mailed on May 30th, 2008. Seems they do not have a high level of confidence in the US Postal Service's speed record, since the message went on to say that I must wait until June 27th, 2008 to call them again because they "are unable to take any further action until that date" regarding my claim.
Thereby increasing my level of stimulation.
Hmmm, we filed our taxes and got a message that we had forgotten to fill out some form or another. THat form involed taking a number from line X of the tax form we had filled out and comparing it to line Y of same said form. If the differance was $0 then we were to put that in line Z and if it was something else we were to put something else into line Z (or some confusing stuff like that). You will note that this is all information that they already had on said tax return.
ReplyDeleteThey also told us that our "refund/stimulas" would be held up due to the "missing form."
Our local newspaper had a headline last week along th e lines of "Thousands of stimulus rebates go unclaimed."
(We did get it, electonically deposited, desite the fact that we mail our returns in via paper trails.)
Okay, now I'm even more stimulated. Especially since the IRS's Tax Rebate Information website specifically says that you do not have to file or do anything to claim your stimulus/rebate payment.
ReplyDeleteI ought to be stimulated similar to Jayhawk becasue I've not gotten anything yet. I paper filed taxes on April 13th or so (and yes, I had to pay this year). No I'm not expecting anything until I get it. Seeing is believing. But I suppose I ought to call or something.
ReplyDelete