For the last six months, we’ve tried to establish a helpful consumer-oriented site to help people understand and keep up to date with the Home Buyer Tax Credit. We created what we think is the most comprehensive set of resources explaining the intricacies of the credit on the internet, created the only fully-featured eligibility test to tell you whether you’re eligible, provided links to the actual legislation and IRS rulings, created video tutorials, kept a running news feed, provided up-to-date commentary on this Blog, and answered hundreds of reader questions about eligibility. We even tried (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to spark a legislative campaign to eliminate a freakish “marriage penalty” in the tax credit.
For the most part, though, the work is done. We’re well past the initial contract deadline of April 30th, and the closing deadline of June 30th. Although the closing deadline has been extended until the end of September, which is a great thing for both buyers and the industry, our expectation is that most buyers will not have difficulty closing on time if they were in contract by April. Four months is a good lengthy period of time to get your closing set up. We don’t expect to see a lot of traffic on the site, or get a lot of questions that have not already been answered.
All this is by way of saying that we will not be keeping this blog as active as we’ve been for the past six months. We’ll check in occasionally if there’s an interesting piece of news or we get a novel question, but otherwise we’ll be focusing our efforts on other things. So if you do have a question, try to find the answer in our FAQ, our Eligibility Test, this blog, or in the 300 or so questions we’ve already answered in the questions section.
My apologies if you post a question and don’t get a response, but at this point we feel that we’ve covered the full range of possibilities that are out there. At some point, we’ll do another pass at all the questions, particularly if something new comes up.
My thanks to everyone who has participated on the site, and who has been reading the blog. We look forward to our next project, and hope that you found the site and the blog helpful.
Thanks,
JR
I still believe our government officials should be pushed to corrrect the marriage penalty in general by allowing up to the full credit to one of two individuals in a marriage if they (the individual) would have qualified for same amount had they not been married. The government has failed (tricked many of) us into believing if we (individually) qualify, we get it. Who would think to go to the IRS site looking for the government’s loopholes? I didn’t until it was too late. Your belief it was an accident, I’m not feeling the same. They could have corrected it in its entirety if it really was. Simply put, their corrections were made seemingly made “kicking and screaming” and half-hearted. It still amazes me how the real estate sites with their rubber stamp questionaire absolutely fail (I believe intentionally to promote sales) to ask you if you are married and what your spouse’s status is on home ownership. They too are complicit in all of this. I even got an extension on my taxes in the hope that there would be further corrections to this situation. No such luck. Looks like government is too worried about what corporate entities they are going to give our money to next.
Greg P.
South Florida