taxcut.com, stimulus, and child born in 2008

Mar 11, 2009 2 Replies

Hello all,



I'm glad I found this group for general tax questions and hope I'm not asking something that's already been discussed (I've done some searching on the web and haven't found an answer yet). If it's been discussed already, please excuse me (and feel free to point me to the previous discussion)



As in previous years, I'm using the online version of TaxCut for my taxes. My wife and I are filing married/joint, as in years past. Last year we received $1200 from the "stimulus" that was passed as an advance for 2008. My understanding is, and confirmed by the IRS, that if we had a child in 2008, we would get the additional $300 that we didn't get last year (again, because it was an advance for 2008 taxes). We had a child at the beginning of July 2008.



I have included our new bundle of tax deduction in our taxes and he has a social security number, which is also entered. During the dialog for TaxCut, it asks about the 2007 "stimulus" and how much we received. I told it that we received the full amount we were due at the time ($1200). However, it never mentioned anything about the fact that we had a child born in 2008, and said that we are not due any more money. Doing my research on the web, it looks like if TaxCut had done something automatic, there would be something on line 70, "Recovery Rebate Credit", but that line is left blank. My question is, are there any other TaxCut users (or H&R folks) reading who can give me guidance in what I need to do to get the additional money. Thank you for any help you can give!



Brian Johnson


Suspect # 1: You didn't tell Tax Cut that the child lived with you for 12 months. This is the appropriate entry for a child who was born or died during the year. (Congratulations, BTW.) A way of checking this is to see whether you're getting the Child Tax Credit on line 52. Fixing the one entry will cure both problems.

Suspect # 2: You had a 2008 spike of income sufficient to make you ineligible for the credit. Right-click on line 70 to open the worksheet for that line and check the calculations and the entry near the bottom for the amount of stimulus payment you received.

Suspect #3. The tax on the 2008 doesn't generate an RRC higher than the $1200 already received including the $300 for the child.

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