Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Rebate for (Almost) Everyone?

The Joint Committee on Taxation has posted a description of the "Economic Stimulus Act of 2008" which is scheduled for markup tomorrow by the Senate Committee on Finance.

After reading through it, the one interesting thing I noticed was that the description does not contain any discussion about a phaseout for the rebate check. Every news report I read stated that the rebate would phase out if the taxpayer earned too much money in 2007. However, there is nothing about that in the description and, in fact, in one of the examples, a couple with 230,000 in income is described as receiving a rebate.

That will likely get changed in the markup, but I was rather surprised by it.

UPDATE: It didn't even take the Senate to change it. The proposed bill in the house (HR 5140) has this language:
The amount of the credit allowed by subsection (a) (determined without regard to this subsection and subsection (f)) shall be reduced (but not below zero) by 5 percent of so much of the taxpayer's adjusted gross income as exceeds $75,000 ($150,000 in the case of a joint return).

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