Saturday, May 3

Adoption Credit and the Stimulus Check

I just wanted to clear up something that had me confused for the last several weeks, just in case anyone else might be confused too.

If you filed your taxes and claimed an adoption credit, you may not get what you expected to get in your stimulus payment. I know we didn't, and it took some digging to find out why. The bottom line is if your adoption credit brought your tax liability down to zero, then you will only get $300 per person instead of the $600 you might have been expecting.

So our new fence will probably not be completed this month as we had hoped since we are $600 short of what we were hoping for, but at least we'll get it started and pray for the money to finish is sometime this year!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My family is in the same boat as yours. It is what it is.

Anonymous said...

Greetings!

I'm in the same boat. My wife and I are actually working off 2 adoption credits, one year after the other.

I just wanted to let you know that you may still be able to receive the balance of the full stimulus payment, albeit next year. Here's how I read the rules and apply it to my situation:

1. The adoption credit(s) may be spread out over 5 years. You are not required to claim a credit as early as possible, as far as I know. In my case, the 2 credits will not fully offset my federal income tax liability for the next 5 years, so there's so wiggle room in there.

2. The stimulus is actually set up as an early discount on your 2008 taxes... so you can qualify with your 2007 OR 2008 return, or both, up to the maximum amount. So if you defer just enough of your remaining adoption tax credit next year to a following year so that your tax liability ends up right at $600 (or $1200 per couple), you should be able to claim the rest of your stimulus payment and save that credit for future years.

I'm not certain of this, but it seems to fit with all the rules I'm reading.

 

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