I know I qualify for the rebate but irs says my income not high enough. Is it not seeing my Social Security?

Question

I filed our taxes February and then amended it March, a 1099 provider sent a corrected 1099. I went to the IRS site and according to their calculator we qualify for $600 but when I check on their Where's my stimulus payment option it tells me that our income is not high enough. Between Social Security, dividends and interest we earned approximately 22,000 but we did not have any wages or self employed income. Is there a bug in IRS's system that is not seeing the Social Security received or what? We do not owe any back taxes, nor any for 2007. I cannot think of a thing that would affect the rebate. We have never received a letter from IRS but according to the schedule we should have and we should have received a rebate on June 27th or there abouts.

Answer 1

The IRS assumed (and you know what assume means, right?) that if people qualified for the stimulus solely because of their SSA income that they would not be filing for any other reason.  Hence, when they filled out the 1040A, the *only* entry the IRS computer expected to see was the A box on the social security line.  You weren't supposed to list any other income at all.  (Many preparers intentionally psyched the electronic system into accepting the early returns by putting $1 of interest income down.  Had the computer been coded properly, this wouldn't have been a problem.)

If this is the case for you (eg, income below the filing requirement and you didn't pay income tax), the only way to get the stimulus is to file a 1040x, write "stimulus" across the top, fill in name, address, and an explanation (please calculate my stimulus, my ssa benefit was...).  Skip all numbered lines.  Mail and allow 12 weeks to process.  

This has been a nightmare for the military folks.  Many of the guys getting deployed had less than $3000 of pay, filed to get their withholding and got hit with the same logic. The only way to get their withholding back was to list the income and withholding....

Answer 2

SSI benefits, dividends and interest are not qualifying income. Social security payment (not SSI) are qualifying income.

For information on stimulus tax rebate read: http://taxipay.blogspot.com/2008/02/are-...