There's no such thing as a free lunch.
Too good to be true.
Here today. Gone tomorrow.
Two things are certain, death and taxes.

Once upon a time, all of these trite little phrases came to the minds of the citizens of "US" as they learned that their government had bungled the management of a simple tax credit for the people — the allocation of small amounts of funds to certain recipients, keeping track of those allocations, ($250 or perhaps more), the writing of checks and mailing the checks to millions of "US-ers in the spring of the year two-thousand-and-nine.

The bungling of this little task stimulated multitudes to exhaustive laughter when they envisioned how government might handle the enormity of the health care of this vast kingdom. A large governing body called Congress, that existed in a fairy tale region named Washington D.C., far removed from the reality of "US-ers," had created a king-sized health care proclamation, much the same way they had conceived the bigger-than-believable stimulus proclamation months before. In a hurry!

The way these laws, as they were known, were created is also laughable. Scores of members of the governing body would each create portions of the fantasy and these tidbits would get tossed into one big collective piece of prose that no one understood. Therefore, no one ever read the documents which were then sent to the King to sign and forwarded to "departments" to administer. They didn't read or understand the documents either. Eventually, the sheer madness of it all doomed the ruler and his czardom, (But that's another tale.)

Apparently,the ruler named Barack Hussein Obama and sometimes called "Obummer," in his rush to "change" when he was first anointed, behaved more like the court jester than the crown. (He confirmed this by submissively bowing to majesties in far away lands.)

Looking for praise from his subjects, Obama insisted that the Congress expedite the sending of stimulus tax credits to the masses far and wide. Everyone in the land knew that the devil was in the details but no one cared. This was manna from heaven if not from the King's stash! The kingdom was infested with greed and mesmerized by a figurehead who enjoyed grinning and traveling. All seemed right with the world.

How quickly the multitude, some 15,000,000 subjects, sobered up when they realized that their behavior, much like lemmings, had made them victims. They were being robbed of the sheer joy of spending money — the joy of spending the "US" economy out of a recession. The tax credit increased weekly take-home pay for 95% of working families, but alas. the government screwed up and miscalculated. Thousands of individuals with more than one job and married couples, if both parties worked, had to repay $400 or more depending on their earnings. They did this by getting unexpected smaller tax refunds or unwanted bigger tax bills. Even many older citizens who could hardly afford it, had to repay a paltry $250.

And so, the stimulus came and the stimulus went. And so did the ruler. And so did his czars. And so did the Congress of that time.

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If you are in the real world of today's U.S. and want more information about calculating what you may need to fork over your tax credit, try these resources.

IRS Making Work Pay tax credit

IRS withholding calculator