Over here in God’s Chosen Country\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, the economy is going down the pan.\u00c2\u00a0 You can see it on the news, sense it on the streets, and feel it in in your wallet.\u00c2\u00a0 Everything is more expensive, from gas to a gallon of milk (or from petrol to a pint of milk, if you prefer) so everyone has less money.\u00c2\u00a0 Thankfully, God’s Own Government\u00e2\u201e\u00a2 is in control and taking measures to rectify the situation. In a bid to ‘kick-start’ the economy, earlier this year Dubya announced a series of economic measures that included\u00c2\u00a0a one-off payment to every tax-paying American (or legal resident).\u00c2\u00a0 This\u00c2\u00a0became known as the ‘stimulus payment’, and checks (cheques) started going out in May.<\/p>\n
As with everyone else, I received an initial letter announcing the package, and telling me how much I would receive. The payment was of $600 per adult, plus a further $300 per dependent child.\u00c2\u00a0 So I was looking to receive a payment of a couple of grand.\u00c2\u00a0 Great, I thought.\u00c2\u00a0 That’ll pay for the summer vacation.\u00c2\u00a0 We’re off on vacation next week, and I hadn’t seen any sign of my stimulus payment, so I thought I’d check what was going on.\u00c2\u00a0 So I dug out the initial letter I got, and phoned the number on it.<\/p>\n
I worked my way though the recorded options, typed in my Social Security Number (the American equivalent of a National Insurance Number in the U.K.), and was met with an abrupt message telling me that I would not be receiving a stimulus payment because “either yourself or, if filing jointly, your spouse, does not posses a valid Social Security Number or has provided an ITIN”.\u00c2\u00a0 It then thanked me for calling, and hung up.\u00c2\u00a0 I called again, just to make sure, only to be told the same thing (no surprise, I suppose, as it’s a recorded message…).\u00c2\u00a0 I called up a third time to see if there was an option to talk to someone.\u00c2\u00a0 There was not, but they did say that you can call your local tax office.\u00c2\u00a0 So I looked up the number on the Internet and called that.\u00c2\u00a0 Again, I got a a recording, which this time said that if I had questions about my stimulus payment I should call the number I first called.\u00c2\u00a0 And again, no option to speak to someone.\u00c2\u00a0 I never really accepted that you can’t beat the system, but when ‘the system’\u00c2\u00a0comprises a set of recorded messages colluding to foil your every attempt at human contact (assuming there is actually a human behind all of this, but the sheer lack of logic or accountability makes me suspect that there may not be…), you haven’t got a hope in hell.<\/p>\n
An ITIN is an Individual Tax Identification Number.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s what the IRS gives you if you don’t have a Social Security Number (SSN).\u00c2\u00a0 You only need a Social Security Number if you pay tax, which the wife doesn’t as she doesn’t work.\u00c2\u00a0 You can use an ITIN pretty much anywhere you can use an SSN (except renew your driver’s license on-line, apparently…). Uncle Sam has quite happily accepted the wife’s ITIN on our joint tax returns every year for the past eight (and<\/em> accepted my ITIN-carrying family members as valid deductions, and<\/em> paid me a refund on that basis), so why it should suddenly be deemed unacceptable is a mystery. There was nothing in the original ‘offer letter’ that said an SSN not an ITIN was required – it just said you needed to have completed a tax return, which I had. What a gyp.<\/p>\n But what is really<\/span> unfair is that because one of recipients has an SSN the whole payment for the entire family is just canceled. If they want to withhold payment for my spouse (the one with the ITIN) fine (I don’t like it, but I can accept it), but what about my<\/em> payment? Or that of my direct dependents. At least two of us have full SSNs (myself and American-born Freya; the other children do not require one) so surely I should at least get something<\/span>!\u00c2\u00a0 It’s anti-immigrant, that’s what it is.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, it’s not like this is money I’ve earned, and I’ve long learned to not count my chickens before they’ve hatched, but dammit! I’m not that well off that I can just throw away a couple of grand. And I’m pretty sure Dubya got his stimulus payment.<\/p>\n We’re still going on vacation, and we’re still going to have a good time, but I guess I’ll have to do without that ivory back-scratcher for just a little while longer.\u00c2\u00a0 You never know, that one purchase could have been the tipping point that stimulated the economy back out of recession.\u00c2\u00a0 If this recession lasts another 10 years, don’t blame me;\u00c2\u00a0I would have done my part if only the IRS had let me.\u00c2\u00a0 Screw ’em; it’s their problem, now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Over here in God’s Chosen Country\u00e2\u201e\u00a2, the economy is going down the pan.\u00c2\u00a0 You can see it on the news, sense it on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[66,35],"class_list":["post-116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-bureaucracy","tag-money"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":197,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116\/revisions\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}