Wow! $1800 Now that would be a nice chunk of change! I could get stimulated off of that!!
My kids are grown and my income is such that I don't think I'll get much if any stimulus check. Thanks to the kids being grown, I have no short term debt. If I do end up getting anything, I will splurge and put it towards replacing a sickly tree in my front yard, with a new healthy one that will grow in crappy soil.
Basic Eligibility standards:
any but not all taxpayers qualify for the maximum basic payment of $600 for singles or $1,200 for married couples. Many parents are also receiving an additional $300 for each qualifying child, born after Dec. 31, 1990.
Your payment may be less than the maximum for one or more of the following reasons:
*You are single and your net income tax liability is less than $600. If you file Form 1040 net income tax liability is the amount shown on Line 57, plus the amount on Line 52.
*You are married and your net income tax liability is less than $1,200.
*You are single and your adjusted gross income (AGI) is more than $75,000. On Form 1040, AGI is the amount on Line 37.
*You are married filing a joint return and your AGI is more than $150,000.
*You owe back taxes that reduced your payment.
*You have non-tax federal debts such as unpaid student loans or child-support obligations that reduced your payment.
http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/
arti...=179181,00.html
Phase Out: The stimulus payment –– both the basic component and the additional funds for qualifying children –– begins to phase out for individuals with adjusted gross incomes (AGI) over $75,000 and married couples who file a joint return with AGI over $150,000. The combined payment is reduced by 5 percent of the income above the AGI thresholds.
Here are two examples of how the phase out works:
*An individual with AGI of $80,000 and federal income tax liability in excess of $600 would qualify for a basic rebate of $600. Because this individual’s AGI exceeds $75,000, however, her rebate is reduced by $250 (the credit is reduced by multiplying the amount of AGI over $75,000 by 5%). The taxpayer receives an economic stimulus payment of $350.
We're looking at Kiva.org as a vehicle for getting some economic activity rolling.
Ours will go into "my" slush fund,
We have one G child looking at stiff college expenses next fall, maybe housing. Not accepted at the U..
guess you need more then a high GP to get in there now a days.
I'll let her stimulate the college she chooses.
I got $some small number of hundreds of dollars. 2 kids, joint filing - but they decrease the amount by a factor if you have a household income in a certain range.
I think I'll by an ice cream cone and fill up my two cars.. very stimulating.
The Chinese, and other foreign folks, are getting a lot of our money, yes.
But we're already seeing a wrap-around effect due (ironically) to the weak dollar: the European company Airbus recently announced that it is shutting down some of its "expensive" manufacturing operations in Belgium and The Netherlands, and re-opening them...in the southern United States.
The global playing field is being increasingly leveled, for better or for worse (or for both). Therefore, we Americans need to be savvier and learn how to alter how we lead globally, so that we can continue to lead globally.
Hass,
My only issue with your statement, is that it implies an 'inevitability' about the deflationary pressures of global labor availability. Certainly Paul Krugman (among others) feels that political pressure to better split profits with labor, locally or globally has a tremendous offset potential to ameloriate this pressure. There is no requirement to simply 'submit' to the will of corporate desire regarding degredation of labor negotiating power. Most European countries have far fewer (per million) ultra-wealthy than the US - which means that adequate political pressure could, if exerted, require owners to share the wealth and benefit of globalization much more evenly. We shouldn't be the safe harbor for anyone seeking to screw their employees, nor should we entertain allowin companies doing business here to screw employees elsewhere, whether it's shutting down jobs, or shutting down pay. Some folks may say "how do you think you're going to stop it" and frankly, that's not actually as hard as they think. You establish basic labor and profit split standards to do business within our borders. The argument will be that 'but other companies will do it' and/or 'but we won't make enough profit to incent action' to which I'd say "hogwash" - you made less profit and shared more in 1965 and 1975 than you'd be sharing with these rules, and you certainly didn't stop economic activity then. There just wouldnt'be quite so unethical a split of fair share, and there'd be a few ultra-rich who were somewhat less ultra-rich.. boo hoo.
Or, we can get our $325 'stimulus checks' which are in fact NOTHING other than direct subsidy to oil companies from our tax dollars - paid for by deficit spending - i.e. by our kids. It's a nice gig if you can get it, convince an Oil Man to put the government in debt so that consumers can pay even HIGHER prices in a highly inflationary environment. These checks are bandaids on a flood, are NOT rebates of any form, and are flat out stupid - but, from the mind of GWB comes nothing but craven opportunism... par for the course.
What am I going to do with the cash?
My first impulse would be to sign it over directly to Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer's campaign for U.S. Senate. But that would put me over the FEC limit.
What I probably will do is to get some solar hot-water going for my house. We are still working on how to get some of that heat for radiant heat in the house itself. And we are working on a super low-tech solar air-heater; it just puts air into the sun and pumps it back into the house on cold but sunny days.
My wife and I are still arguing about photo-voltaic panels for producing electricity. I think they are cool but she, the ever-practical one, says that the payback is way too long.
Installing sustainable energy stuff on your house, by the way, is about a bazillion times more patriotic than buying cheap Chinese crap from Wallmart. All that money goes to local installers and often local manufacturers (unless you have a windy farm and buy your wind turbines from Europe).
We're going to bank it to offset next year's Democratic tax increases.
It warms my heart to see swifty admiting that Obama will be our next president. 
Thanks for all the detail Flash. I forgot about all the pretax adjustments on gross income, for 401ks, and flex benefits etc....
I should be able to buy a very big tree. I agree with Charley that the most patriotic way to spend this money is to invest in sustainable energy. Or in my case, I think buying a tree is good. I'm pretty sure sugar maples aren't coming from China, yet.
I'll be stimulating the British and French economies, since I'll be spending the money on my honeymoon to London and Paris.
Yay.
Knowing Flash's fans, as I do, I should have been more succinct.
I was speaking, of course, of the DFL tax increases. No one could bank enough to satisfy a double teaming effort from the state Democrats and the federal Democrats.
I'm counting on McCain to offset some of the DFL's pillaging.
Democratic "pillaging," Swiftee? 12 billion dollars every month for the occupation of Iraq seems to be a pretty large cash transfer of public money into the accounts of Lockheed, ATK and Halliburton.
I am going to go out on a limb here, particularly in light of our earlier surprise agreement that the Iraq war was a spectacularly bad idea. I am going to guess that you also are a fiscal conservative, that you have a more pay-as-you-go attitude toward our projected $3 trillion in eventual expenses on Iraq. Is that true?
Do you oppose spending all that money (borrowed from China and India, of course, and put on a credit card for our great-grandchildren) without any sacrifice through taxes to actually pay for that war?
I was totally surprised and pleased to understand that you were against invading Iraq (even though I understand that you feel that "we can't just leave now.") Now I want to know how you feel about current U.S. tax and borrowing policy in regards to paying for that war.
leftout,
I did not mean to suggest a necessary ueber-corporate link between globalization and global growth, but rather the inevitability of globalization that will (and is) leveling, at least somewhat, the economic playing field.
When I lived in Britain, the British were moving to America in droves because of our lower cost of living (and, yes, folks, our cost of living is indeed lower than it is in the U.K., and to suggest otherwise is culturally myopic ridiculousness). The Polish were moving to Britain in order to get better employment and send money back to Poland. The Turkish were moving to Poland to get better employment and send money back home to Turkey.
Now, London is surpassing New York as a financial capital (though many Brits are still moving here due to the cost of living differences); the Polish are moving back to Poland in waves due to economic growth there, spurred by investment from the U.K. and the like; and the Turkish explosion to Poland isn't what it was two years ago, due to economic growth in Istanbul.
This is happening at a global level, too. It's painful for us, to be sure, but it is, on balance, ultimately a good thing. (The obvious exception to that "good thing" issue is how rapidly our manufacturing base is eroding, but even there we are seeing a slight wrap-around effect from...Europe.)
The challenge is to ensure that we don't increasingly become corporate stooges in the process. We can help to avoid that by balancing where and how we spend our money--to invest internationally, but also locally, too.
I think this scenario is ultimately more positive than it is negative because it will force us to be savvier about the global world, and not just at an academic level, but at an "experience" level as well. We can give facts and figures about foreign investment, etc., but many folks often haven't really ever encountered it themselves, which is, I think, increasingly necessary to do. This will force more of us to actually interact, at a level beyond that of a "tourist," with the rest of the world, which will spur more innovation and creativity here at home.
Fareed Zakaria has an interesting take on this issue in the May 12, 2008 issue of Newsweek. I don't agree with everything he says, but I agree with a lot of it....
By the way, since I was in the U.S. for only the very tail end of last year, I received a whopping $300 in "stimulus" money from Uncle Sam this week.
I plan to save the vast majority of it, with a small portion going to "stimulate" my little grey cells at a local watering hole whilst watching my Twins beat the Red Sox tonight....
I think that an administration that understood it's fudciary responsibility to the taxpayers, and took that responsibility seriously, would cut spending anywhere and everywhere before raising taxes even one Sorospenny.
So, Swiftee, let me explore a bit more on your last comment. Would that include military spending as well. Our country does, as I understand it, spend something over half of its discretionary budget on war. And the U.S. spends as much as all of the other world's countries combined on war.
So how would you relate those expenses to our nation's fiscal responsibility? Would you say that we should cut military expenditures until they align with our national income from taxes? Or should we raise our taxes until they meet our military spending? Or should be cut out all non-military spending and have our taxes pay for wars alone? Or are you O.K. with going into massive debt in order to pay for our wars?
I can't think of any more possibilities. Do you favor any of these?
As of today the cost of the war in Iraq
is over 500,000,000,000.00
I am curious to see what all of those complaining about taxes have to say.
Maybe the time has come for a war tax
on all of those making over 200,000.00
a year, we may find the war will end faster when it hits those pocket books.
Well Charley, as an opponent of the war I'm obviously not pleased with the huge tab we're racking up.
That being said, "providing for the common defense" is one of the very few responsibilities that the federal government is required to account for constitutionally.
Education, social services and all of the myriad programs that have been tortured out of the commerce clause, and for which the fed taxes us, are the province of the states.
We could make a very good start by dismantling the Department of Education and returning that right and responsibility to the states, where it belongs.
"We could make a very good start by dismantling the Department of Education and returning that right and responsibility to the states, where it belongs."
On paper I can almost support this, but as there are under privileged people that society should take an interest in guiding to better lives, what do you do about poor states that don't have the revenue to sustain educational success on their own.
I assume Swifty would let those states go back to the early 1900's where the poor/minority schools got the left overs from the more privileged.
You know outdated text books etc.
Sounds like a Republican plan..
Swift, you ignored the question - mostly -
Iraq isn't 'providing for the common defense' first off, and as you said you opposed the war, we'll assume (hopefully correctly) that means you oppose that expenditure.
But let's go to the heart of the matter - would you cut defense spending by the 25% you suggest can be done across the board? Of ALL of the areas of government spending, this is probably ONLY true for defense spending... so, yes or no, would you cut defense spending, if so, by how much?
Let me offer a few programs for you:
1. SDI
2. B1 Bomber fleet continuation
3. F22 Fighter deployment
4. 5-8 more combat brigades
5. The privatization of the supply system.
Contrastingly, Swift, discretionary spending in ALL other areas, like oh, say, college loans, has, adjusted for inflation, been cut dramatically since 1981, and yet... gasp! you're still not rich. Wonder why?
Flash you, of all people, should know that revenue has very little to do with academic success.
That being said, if the public schools are telling us the truth, one of the most persistent ills plaguing them is the hobgoblin named "unfunded mandates". Wouldn't they jump at the chance to get that fixed?
Gigi, do you have any idea, any, of what the public schools record in Minnesota is, vis-a-vis minority failure?
Of course you don't. You've just let your hatred move your fingers again.
If you did have any idea, you'd be blushing with shame right now.
I have a question. Does anyone know if those dollars people are receiving are going to have to be claimed as income next year?
Oh Swifty..I spent one year tutoring
some minority children to help them pass their tests.
Do you know how overwhelmed the teachers are in this state ?
I am surprised anyone would consider teaching as a vocation in this era of
"let them eat the crumbs.."
Got right down amongst 'em, did ye? Well aren't you a saint, Gigi.
If I was a saint Mr. Swifty, I would
be an Educator.
Heaven is an open shop Gigi; saints don't strike.
You might not know it, but teaching used to be a Profession as well.
I plan on paying taxes other people should be paying because they say I have to......
And GiGi thank you for your volunteer service....if more would spend a little time (those with free time) it would make a big difference to overall ed issues / problems. Your investment in those childrens lives will have a significant impact for them and their future. while you did not do it for personal gain, wouldn't it be neat if there was some type of tax benefit? Property tax relief would be a good way to encourage fixed income seniors to spend some of their extra time helping those in need learn and at the same time help them keep homes many are getting taxed out of.
Just a thought.....
Doctor,
As far as I know, you absolutely do NOT have to claim this as income. It's a tax refund, you already paid it as taxes, nothing else, they are merely saying you have to pay less (for now). More accurately I suppose, they are saying they are lending it to you - from your kids - so that you can give it to the gas man.
BTW Tom,
As you brought up the preamble to the Constitution (provide for the common defense)..
Tell me how you feel about the rest.
Promote the general welfare - meaning, promote good public policy to promote the general improvement of conditions for ALL, not just some.
Secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity- do you feel that bankrupting a government more, or less, secures the blessings of liberty for your children? Beyond that, do you think saddling them with debt is providing for your posterity?
The point is, providing for a common defense is only one piece of that preamble, and one part, promoting general welfare, I've generally found righties hate - or at least certainly do not advocate ANY (or damned few)programs which fall within this over-arching requirement. Past that, common defense assumes prudent application of force, wise leadership in the face of crisis, and fiscal prudence based on strategic threat. Doing otherwise emperils that common defense, makes the blessings of liberty insecure, and destroys the general welfare. I believe it's irrefutable this administration has catastrophically mismanaged our public treasury, our defense, and especially, our reaction to 9/11 - our defense was treated commonly, casually, and with cavalier disregard for our future.
Thanks Doc, but I don't need tax incentives, and anyway my Tax guy doesn't itemize.
Yes Mr. Swifty teaching is an honorable profession.
My Brother was a teacher for over 40 years (one of many in my family) I think his last 10 were spent
in SD on the Little Wound Indian Reservation.
Today's young people can't be sure if they will have jobs if they go into Education,
Almost every school District is going through massive layoffs.
What incentive do any of them have today to be teachers?
I am encouraging my G daughter, who is now looking at college for her next two years, to go into the health field, hopefully RN.
Then she won't be standing in line for a job when she is out of school.
The "general welfare" as pertains the powers of Congress, were innumerated to proclude moonbats from perverting our liberties:
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
""Does anyone know if those dollars people are receiving are going to have to be claimed as income next year?
The Doctor | 05.11.08 - 8:49 pm | # ""
From the IRS letter I just received:
"You will not be required to report the amount of your stimulus payment as taxable income on your 2008 federal income tax return"
Commenting by HaloScan
