Poll: Bill-Paying Tops Rebate Check Plans

(CBS/AP)  The government started depositing thousands of rebate checks in taxpayers' bank accounts on Monday, earlier than originally scheduled, with the Bush administration hoping the payments will give a jump-start to a weak economy.

According to a CBS News/New York Times poll conducted over the weekend, 75 percent of Americans expect to receive a rebate check. Of those expecting a rebate, half say they plan to pay bills with the extra money, 27 percent say they will save or invest it and 18 percent plan to spend it.

While American taxpayers may be delighted to receive the extra cash, 56 percent do not think the rebate checks will stimulate the economy, and only 41 percent think that it will help.

Read The Complete Poll Results

The Internal Revenue Service started making the deposits at 8:30 a.m. EDT Monday with the goal of completing 800,000 direct deposits each day over the first three days of this week. No deposits will be made Thursday while the IRS prepares a big batch of 5 million direct deposits scheduled on Friday.

The government's paper checks will start going out on May 9, a week earlier than previously announced. The rebates, which are expected to reach 130 million households, range up to $600 for an individual and $1,200 for a couple. Families with children will get $300 per child.

The rebates were the centerpiece of the government's $168 billion economic stimulus package enacted in February and are designed to bolster consumer spending and lift the economy out of the doldrums.

The checks will arrive six months too late to prevent an economic slowdown, which started back in December, reports CBS News correspondent Anthony Mason. But they could help keep what many economists now say is a recession from getting even worse.

President Bush last week disputed that the country has fallen into a recession, saying he believed it was a period of slower growth not an full-blown recession.

"It's obvious our economy is in a slowdown. But fortunately we recognized the signs and took action," Bush said Friday in announcing that the rebates were going out a few days earlier than expected.

The rebate checks are coming as the IRS wraps up sending out the normal refund checks to taxpayers based on their 2007 tax returns which taxpayers had to file by April 15.

The IRS said all checks for those who filed tax returns on time are scheduled to be deposited or mailed by July 11. The direct deposits and the paper checks are being processed by the last two digits of a taxpayers' Social Security number.

For people receiving direct deposits, those with a Social Security number ending in 00 to 20 will have their economic stimulus payment deposited to their bank account by May 2.

Those with Social Security numbers ending in 21 to 75 will get their direct deposits by May 9 and those with Social Security numbers ending in 76 to 99 getting their deposits by May 16.

[patbrighteye]

iam very glad for the rebate check it a help for us all especially the needs we all of facing now. thank again . nothing else further at this time.

[patbrighteye]

iam very glad for the rebate check it a help in the time of needs that facing us all right now. thank again. nothing else further at this time.

[siouxzan75]

I fell for the H&R Block thing....
Now I will be in the last round of the rebates. I was leary of the whole thing, free-handout?? Somewhere, someone is paying for this. They say it will jumpstart our economy, but how can it? I have this feeling like it is all going to come back and bite us all. Sure, I will take it and spend it... but what will the effect really be? And for those who are on fixed incomes... who is going to pay for their rebate? It all seems a little scary... what is really going to come from all of this?

[redchance99]

grr so irritated...i was going over our tax info and hr block has a third party bank where your "REFUND" goes to hsbc bank first, then they turn around and deposit your "REFUND" to your checking acct. you requested the direct deposit to go to for hr block....(at time of filing i was sceptical about this and i asked the guy to not do that to just put our "REFUND" into our checking directly and not go through a third party bank, and he claimed that this was something hr block does and we had no choice and we were charged $29.95 by this third party bank to do so! on top of it.)
The irs is not depositing these "REBATES" into third party banks so anybody who wanted hr block to directly deposit their "refund" will get their "rebate via paper checks....grrrrr!
I looked at irs.gov this means they aren''t mailing our "REBATE" check we so desperatly need till may 23rd. if they go by the last two digits of my husbands social, if they go with mine...then it won''t be untill june 13th. I''ll remember this in the future....I feel like we''ve gotten screwed over by hr block and hsbc and we will think twice about who we file with in the future.

[shadows4u-2009]

iam glad the checks are coming its a godsend i have lost my house. its to late for me and mine. but as for the rich its been along time coming. u just cant keep getting richer

[shadows4u-2009]

iam glad the checks are coming its a godsend i have lost my house. its to late for me and mine. but as for the rich its been along time coming. u just cant keep getting richer

[shadows4u-2009]

iam glad the checks are coming its a godsend i have lost my house. its to late for me and mine. but as for the rich its been along time coming. u just cant keep getting richer

[shadows4u-2009]

iam glad the checks are coming its a godsend i have lost my house. its to late for me and mine. but as for the rich its been along time coming. u just cant keep getting richer

[naucoming4u]

"I do not think we should punish wealthy people who worked hard and earned their financial success."

Posted by bobmarisol at 12:24 PM : Apr 29, 2008
............

Who says that all wealthy people "worked hard" and "earned" their money?

I have two words for you bob:

Paris Hilton

Of course, she is just one of the majority of the wealthy who DID NOT earn the majority of wealth they have accumulated.

When one works, and earns income from that work, then that should be taxed as minimally as possible.

But when one wins their wealth, either by inherritance, the lottery, or various investments, then 50% is perfectly fine. It''s not like they lost what they "earned".... they''re just getting to keep half of what they won.

(And yes, gaining from investments is mostly due to luck, since you are putting your money in someone or something else to do the work for you. And you''re lucky if they don''t just squander or run off with it!... Enron).

[aajjs]

you will NOT have to claim it as income next year, this is an advance on tax credits that you would have recieved next year, in other words they added tax credits and advanced you the money.