Monday, August 23, 2010

In which we become slightly less poor

I have to fill in a US tax return - it doesn't do me any good or bad as I neither pay US taxes nor am entitled to a rebate, but it's a legal requirement, and they get snippy when I want to go back to the US, if I'm not up to date on them. Occasionally they have a Federal cash handout. I get these too, even if I haven't paid any taxes. This year, Mr Spouse got one as well, as he did his taxes last year!

The US government, unlike some others I might mention (*cough* the UK *cough*) actually encourages people to adopt - to the tune of $13K tax rebate.

They've just changed the rules so you don't actually have to pay the $13k before you claim it back. It's really to encourage people who wouldn't have paid that much in tax because they don't earn much - I'm not quite sure if our US taxes per year would reach that but over the five years you can spread it, if we did pay them, we'd easily pay that. But now we can claim it anyway!

I suspect there are 2 1/2 people to whom this applies, so it's not like we're going to bankrupt Obama. But it will be jolly nice to have a small amount back. Actually, it will be "back" since I paid them in the distant past.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hooray! A Win!

Lia - not Juno said...

Ouch, taxes hurt my head. Blah. Where do you guys live, anyway? Like, townwise?

DrSpouse said...

Yeah - my head hurts too - and that reminds me, I have to do my UK taxes for last year now (for those not in the UK, the UK tax year ends in April but you have till January to do them, so the other way round) - Lia, we're in the North of England in a rainy bit...