If you are one of the lucky folks who gets a tax refund each year (I unfortunately never get one) you should know by know about how much you’ll get back from Uncle Sam for your 2005 taxes. Tax refunds can add up to some pretty hefty sums. According to the IRS, the average refund so far this tax season is $2,436. That’s a quite a windfall!
What are you planning on doing with your tax refund? According to a TrueCredit survey, 70% of Americans reported that they would save their refund and only 31% of people said they would splurge on something fun. In addition:
- 40% would devote refund money to paying down a mortgage or other bills
- 38% would pay off credit card bills
- 34% would take a vacation
This is dramatic shift from the results of the same survey last year. In 2005, only 26% of people reported that they would save their tax refund. Does this mean that people are more concerned about saving for the future this year? Maybe the Vice President’s advice is being taken to heart!
Share your plans for your tax refund in the comments section below. Are you a saver or a splurger when it comes to money back from Uncle Sam?
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One first thing, when you are not getting tax refunds, you are a smart financial planner. If some one is getting refunds means, that some one gave free loan to Uncle Sam by having neglected in properly reporting the W7 updates. so, be cool, you are right
Yeah, we didn’t mean to give the IRS a loan this year, but hey, we’re not used to being on the refund side of the tax spectrum.
Anyway, our money went straight towards paying down a student loan. We don’t really get any tax benefit to the student loan anymore so my goal is to get the thing paid off in the next few months. The tax refund, which we got last Friday, went a long way in doing just that.
Great feedback Sree and Liz! I am always happy about the fact that I am not lending money to the IRS…but it would be nice to get a little windfall each April.
It is sort of like when you find $10 in an old coat pocket! Sure, you could have been investing that money…
It turns out we’re getting a refund this year. Had this been 3 years ago I’d be so excited about it. Now, I just see where we could make changes to ensure Uncle Sam doesn’t get a loan from us.
Some of our deductions were unavoidable though: daycare, HSA, mortgage, student loan payments, and business loss. It’ll be a different story come January 2007.
We’ll be using our refund this year to pay off our remaining credit card. We’ll finally be able to close that account and be done with them.