Just finished reading a USA Today article which refers to a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study says they expect over 200,000 American households to use their income tax refunds to pay for filing bankruptcy.
“Last year the average tax refund was $2,913, NBER says. That’s enough for many Americans to file for bankruptcy,” says the article. “Those who have trouble saving money will delay filing for bankruptcy until they have a one-time cash infusion, such as tax rebates or tax refunds.”
It’s not news to me that people often will use their tax refunds to hire me or someone like me to prepare a bankruptcy filing. The predicted number, however, seems pretty high to me even though it is a nation wide number. If asked to guess off the top of my head what the number would be, I would have figured about half that – maybe 100,000.
Well, tax day is Tuesday – April 17th this year. Getting the returns filed is important. I no longer will file a bankruptcy case in a situation where all the tax returns have not been filed first. But take care of yourself and don’t get too frantic about it. In particular, don’t have a car accident over it.
I just deleted a spam comment from some debt settlement place I never heard of. I followed the link they left in their comment, and found myself on a site where I could find no info on just who they were or where they were. Their name, however, was designed to sound like a government agency.