So I decided to see if you get more if you earn more, or more if you earn less. Every number I tried up to $74,000 (since over $75,000 you get nothing) got an estimate of $300 too. That made some sense since there’s a cap.
This must mean people who made very little would get the $600, then, right? The minimum qualifying income is $3,000 so I entered numbers as if someone had made $4,000. Their estimate was…$300!
If earning $4,000 to $74,000 gets you $300, who on earth is going to get the $600 we keep hearing about?
Stupid question–I do my taxes with TurboTax, so I just enter the numbers and it electronically files a return for me. I don’t know the details. I know that I am getting a pretty hefty refund this year. Is the stimulus payment part of my refund, or is it a separate payment I will get in addition to my refund?
That’s the point, you’re not going to get more than $300 back unless you owed more than $300.
If you owe somewhere between $0 & $300, you get $300. If you owe between $300 & $600, you’ll get back what you owed. If you owed over $600, you get $600.
Now I’m confused. I just put my tax info in the calculator on that page and it said that my expected stimulus payment is $600. I didn’t owe anything on my taxes, in fact I have already received my refund.
Or wait, when you say “owe,” do you mean in the Tax After Credits box? The line it is telling me to take that sum from is just what was subtracted in taxes for the whole year from my income.
I think there is a lot of confusion about this on this thread. Your eligibility has nothing to do with how much you owe or will get back once you file (in other words, how much you underpaid or overpaid with your withholding during the year). It is to do with your total tax liability for the year.
For instance, my wife and I got a hefty refund back this year because we withheld too much, so we “owed” nothing after filing. Yet we will still get the $1200 stimulus.
It sounds like you were using what you would owe still after filing as the criteria. If you think about that, it makes no sense whatsoever to do it that way (not that there aren’t plenty of things that don’t make sense when it comes to this package!): why would you get less because you paid more tax then you should have during the year?
Yes, I’m still confused. This probably stems from having gotten a little over 1/2 way through doing my taxes on paper before deciding to e-file with H&R block instead. I think everyone will agree that my skills at number interpretation probably dictate that being the wiser course.
I didn’t actually get to line 35 (1040a) so therein lies the confusion with the calculator… what exactly is supposed to go in the box on the calculator that says “Enter the amount of tax after credits (Form 1040A, Line 35): ___” the amount from line 28 - $518 - or the amount I owed after adding up what I paid over the course of the year - $18? I had zero credits in lines 28-33 so that doesn’t muddy the water any. As you point out, I get a very different result if I put in $518 instead of $18.
When they use the phrase “the amount you owe” that refers to the total amount of taxes you pay, whether you paid them when they were withheld from your paycheck or whether you are paying them now by sending a check. They really mean “the total amount you were taxed.”
Did you mean to say that you didn’t get a hefty refund back, but still get the full $1200 because of other qualifers (married/dependents)?
We got back about $5k between federal and state, and I claimed 5 exemptions throughout the year, and I understand that I am going to also qualify for the $1200 (although my wife keeps saying $2200…so which is it?)
Is there any clear info on this on the IRS’s website?
I’ll let someone else cull that info, as I don’t want the government to, you know, track my IP and all…
No, I did get a hefty refund back. What I was really trying to say was that I will be eligible for the $1200 regardless of what my refund (or money still owed) was. This is because the amount of tax I had to pay during this year was greater than $1200 (whether it was withheld from my paycheck or still owed after filing is irrelevant).
I have already filed for 2007 and my refund has already been deposited in my bank account. However I am still expecting to receive the $1200 from the stimulus package in May based on the information on the IRS website.
That is what I meant - but when I used “tax liability” in post 5, that was confusing, so I changed to “amount you owe” which is confusing in a different way.
Are you taking care of any one other than yourself? Did you go to school last year? And are you doing any saving for retirement? If all of those are “no,” then put in what you put down for line 28. That should make the calculator work.
The number on line 28 was your tax for the year. If you have a “normal” job, you pay a little bit of that tax every pay check. What happens during tax time is that we reconcile the actual amount of tax and the bits we’ve been paying every paycheck. If we overpaid all year long, the IRS hands back the excess. If we underpaid all year long, you have to pay the rest back.
The economic stimulus payment amount is (roughly) based on how much you made for the year and your tax for the year. It has nothing to do with the reconciled amount.
If you paid <= 300 in taxes in 2007, you will receive 300.
If you paid 300 < x <= 600 in taxes in 2007, you will receive the amount of taxes you paid.
If you paid > 600 in taxes in 2007, you will receive 600.
So if, over the course of the year, the gov’t withheld $3500, but you actually only owed $500 by the normal rules, then you get a $3000 rebate, as usual. After that, for this special one-time additional rebate, this year, you will also get a $500 rebate.
Frylock’s post is the first one that makes sense to me, but it also gives me a likely stupid question to throw into the mix. My federal tax liability this year was about 15% of my gross income. Of course, I just have 1 regular job and didn’t write anything off. But even still, the OP was plugging in $74,000 and still owing less than $300? Less than half a percent? Howzat work?
I have a feeling I’m just missing something obvious, since I’ve never really paid any attention to anybody’s tax situation but my own. And yes, I am getting the $600.
