Waiting for the Tax Credit to Show Up
Nice article written by Kara McGuire at the StarTribune today. She detailed several people’s agony in the ever increasing wait to receive their $8,000 check from the IRS for their first time home buyer tax credit.
According to the article, the IRS has to review each amended tax return by hand. Since there are over one million of these potentially rolling in, you can see why it’s going to take a while. In the past amended returned were to be reviewed within 8 to 12 weeks but the IRS has extended that to 12 to 16 weeks due to volume.
There were several stories of people who bought a home in May or June that are still waiting to get their money. It’s a perfect example of what can go wrong with using tax money to stimulate the economy. Based on what I read, I’m estimating that about $3 billion of the tax credit money that should have already been spent at stores like Home Depot is still sitting in the vast government abyss, just waiting to be released…oh well, at least there’s tens of billions of more dollars about to come our way soon (we’ll see how badly that gets messed up).
