Hi Jock Ewing, Being a furriner - I have no useful advice to offer regarding your Incentive funds, tax refund, etc. ... sorry about that. However - I'm with dadoes ... wouldn't it be a good idea for you to plan to reduce your tax refund to close to $0.00? Over the years that I've worked as a personal financial advisor, one of my major suggestions to clients and others was that they reduce their income tax refund to $0.00. Even at low rates of interest ... money in your bank account does develop a small amount of interest, during the year and a quarter to a half or so that some of it would be there. I'd like to suggest that, during the year while your extra large withholding is being held back and sent to the IRS as an interest-free loan, you check with your bank as to the amount of interest that the extra amount withheld would have earned. Then when you receive your tax refund, suppose you take an equal amount and, in the presence of your family, throw it into the street. Do you figure that they would, on the strength of that act, judge you to be a wise manager of money? Not only are you losing the small amount of interest (let's call it a "pittance") that that amount of money would earn if you'd taken it and put it into a separate and inviolable bank account ... it would have been available in case of need to deal with a major emergency expense. The IRS wouldn't have been too sympathetic had you, facing such a need, asked them to pay you a portion of that potential refund during that year. Which relates to another major suggestion that I made to my clients ... that they try to have at least 3 months' income available in easily accessible asset in case of an emergency. With six months', nine months' or a year's amount being built up in case of substantial unexpected need - including, in recent years, a possible extended period of unemployment. I shared with a number of them the information that I often did not have that on hand myself during my years of recent employment, as I held a "credit" (really "debt") card with, usually, zero or almost zero owing, with full amount paid off monthly prior to due date, plus a line of credit at the bank, usually sitting unused (with no set-up or maintenance fee if unused) which I could draw on to pay off the credit card balance due after use to cover an emergency. Actually, I recently signed up for another card, with 1.9% interest rate for 9 mos. on transferred balances, to use to purchase stock, should I so choose, as I would have to pay 5.00% currently on my line of credit but can buy the stock using the first card, then transfer the balance. But - the first card will charge interest at regular rate (about 18%) from the date that I draw on it till the date that it moves to the second card. By the way - I'm 80 and live on less than the income from my three pensions (one governmental with residence requirement, so housewives qualify, a second contributory related to my former income, and a third private contributory one) plus a small annual required amount of withdrawal from a tax-deferred retirement account. That income is much more secure that most employment income, as all that I need do to qualify is ... ... stay topside the grass! Which makes my pension income almost a guaranteed income (as long as the private carrier and the government stay solvent - and ours is a lot closer to that than yours). Do yourself a favour, Jock, please - set up a bank acocunt that you promise to leave alone except in case of extreme emergency ... and deposit the amount of withholding overcharge from every paycheque. With a name such as yours - you may have a drop or two of Scottish blood in your veins ... and you know their reputation for being careful with the use of money. Good wishes for what's left of winter, the spring - and the rest of the year. ole joyful

I agree, you shouldn't feel sorry Kat. You mainly posted it to vent out your disapproval of your nephew worthlessness. Funny how life and people are. I've been disabled all my life and all my life I refused to do what your nephew is doing. I worked hard because I enjoyed spending my own money rather than the government's & the taxpayers'. I'm not one that likes to abuse the system. Almost 2 years ago, my disability changed its course and forced me to quit working. I am now living on disability income. You just don't know how much I miss going to work and make my own money. When I had to apply, the social security agent could see how much I was in distressed. She tried to comfort me by stressing out that I've paid my dues all these working years. And, that I shouldn't feel bad now for living on SS Disability, that's what was there for. I am not depressed but I feel empty and useless. I don't understand how anyone would enjoy or accept feeling this way. A counselor had told me that it's usually how she has seen. The physical cabable ones don't want to work and just want to live on welfare; yet, the disabled ones try harder to be in among the working force. The system is there to help the needy ones but there are so much abuse over it. It's very sadden indeed.

Wow! Thank you for all of the great advice. In response to Serenity and others with questions: 1. No, I am not B**ching to my husband about the excessive money he spends on his daughter. That's why I'm on this forum. But, after giving it some thought maybe I should be more vocal. I think the reason my husband spent the $1700.00 on her last year behind my back was because he knew it was wrong and couldn't bring himself to tell or ask me. But he also couldn't say "No" to his daughter. 2. No, I do not with hold money from my step daughter. My husband and I do have seperate accounts and we split the bills. I tend to try to spend an equal amount on each child, while he tends to only spend on his daughter. 3. My step-daughter is by no means deprived. She wears designer clothing (because of grandma) while the other children get their clothing from Value Stores, she gets pedicures and manacures, eats out while we eat in, goes on vacation while we get to stay home, and drives around to parties on our gas money. Grandma pays outragous cell phone bills and gives her several hundred dollars a week to spend. 4. Grandma is also grandma to our son, but wants nothing to do with him financially. She says she must focus on my step daughter because she only has one parent (actually she has two, but her mom is a drug addict and a theif) 5. No matter how much I give or how hard I try, my step daughter does not like me. 6. My step daughter dropped out of school because she is allowed to do what ever she wants when ever she wants. She didn't feel like going to school and got kicked out. She would prefer to spend her time with her loser boyfriend. 5. We would never ever allow my step daughter to drive without good brakes, but up until last week there was no good reason for her to be driving around. 6. Grandma bought her the car too. 7. My husband will not stand up to his mom or his daughter. Anytime I try to step in I'm always the bad guy. 8. I know what they are doing is wrong. Children who are given everything appreciate nothing. She has had no job because she didn't need one. She dropped out of school because she didn't see the value in a good education. I truely believe she thinks the gravy train will last forever. 9. It drives me crazy because if she were mine, or even if I would be able to have some say in this situation I believe I could make a huge difference in her life. I'm going to HR on Monday to change how many deductions I take out of my check. It would be nice to have more money to spend thoughout the year. Also, then less of my money will be going to a cause I firmly don't believe in. I will also talk to my husband. If he still wants to spend his money on her that's fine, but I'm getting that swing set for our son before he is too old to enjoy it.

I've only had a few encounters with the IRS about such problems. They tend to speak more openly and broadly with CPAs than with taxpayers. The IRS's main concern is to identify and intercept false filings. They consider themselves a secondary victim of identity theft (with the individual concerned as of course the primary victim), because it disrupts their mission to administer the tax law fairly and give reasonable service to taxpayers. I'm not sure which federal agency, the IRS or another, has the job to try to track down the wrong-doers. The IRS as an agency is chronically underfunded and about this I am very sympathetic. They have their shoe laces tied together while trying to do the best job possible and it suffers because of lack of funding in the federal budget. One of the areas with the most bandaids and patches is its IT infrastructure, a key tool for identifying false filings. It's really dumb and shortsighted, because it's been well demonstrated that each additional dollar given to the IRS for key programs produces many dollars of additional collections for the federal treasury. No other agency can demonstrate so easily such a multiple in its bang for the buck. My understanding is that they're domestic, not foreign, fraudsters because they need to be around to collect mailed refund checks. They often use mail service locations for that. A bank transfer would be traceable through bank records. It's easy to anonymously cash a check at a lower level "financial" institution where no account opening is needed. A payday loan business would be an example. I won't suggest that my understanding of this is complete and comprehensive. As above, my encounters have been limited but these comments are the upshot of what I learned about this problem. Of course, any expert in this particular area is invited to shed more light or correct any mistakes of understanding I have.