Tax Refund

[tuna.Rc]

Im a little in debt, who isnt
My whole refund was "offset " , meaning they took my whole refund to pay on a credit card i owe on. The IRS has my banking info now obviously for the direct deposit. Now that the IRS has my bank info, can the credit card company help themselves to my account for the the rest of the money I owe?

[klavy69]

yes...depending on how its set up. Did the IRS do a direct deposit to the credit card company or take it directly outta your account? If they took it outta your account you could easily close that one out and open up another . Something else that could easily keep them from doing something like that is pay them something like $20 a month (or $10 or whatever) and then they can't act upon your accounts legally since you are trying to make it right. Lotsa little things you could've done to keep that from happening but hindsight is always 100%. Sorry it happened and good luck getting around it the rest of the way...

Todd

[RC104ever]

Wow - credit and finances are totally different in the U.S. aren't they? Not saying its right or wrong, just - different. As far as I know, if I was getting a tax refund and owed money on a credit card, the gov't wouldn't help the credit card company.

Maybe I'm wrong.

[THEYTOOKMYTHUMB]

A credit card is typically unsecured debt and they shouldn't be able to touch your refund. Unless the credit card is provided by your bank and they are simply retrieving funds that are deposited into an account which they control. In either case I'd take Todd's advice and switch banks.

Several years ago I owed the IRS a relatively small amount from a "mistake" that I'd made several years earlier. Just for fun I researched different options and forms that I could fill out and it turned out that I could have taken about 5 years to pay off a small amount with almost no penalty. Do some thorough research on credit cards and you may find a legitimate similar option.

FWIW I finally got tired of playing around with the IRS and just paid it off in full.

[kink]

It's funny... my recent tax bill was way less than I was expecting. So I spent the ear marked money on my RC10. This is what triggered me getting back into it and joining up here.