The IRS left a big question hanging in the air when it announced that the debt indicator would not return for 2011. The issue is the split refund. The split refund already exists. This year, tax payers were allowed to dedicate a “split” of their refund They said that will study the idea of letting taxpayers split their refund.

RALs aren’t going to disappear. Right now, Steve Trager, John Hewitt, Alan Bennett and the other titans of the refund anticipation loan are developing (more…)

Today’s announcement by the IRS that it is canceling the debt indicator is very significant.

The debt indicator is what made the refund anticipation loan possible. Without it, banks would never have been able to tell if a tax filer had outstanding tax liens. Now that the IRS is ceasing to provide the debt indicator, the future of refund anticipation loans seems dim.

RALs were a big business. More than 470,000 North Carolina households spent almost $50 million on RAL fees in 2006 (according to research we did with the IRS’ SPEC data).

The IRS’ complicit involvement in the RAL business was undermining (more…)

Mark Ernst was clear in his May 6th speech at CERCA (Council for Electronic Revenue Communication Advancement) that he intends to revisit the debt indicator.  According to Ernst,

The Debt Indicator as it is currently delivered is a public good – meaning the IRS provides this information so that  consumers can get an advantage they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. In as much as the DI is the primary underwriting tool, that advantage should really come in the form of lower prices. But in fact prices are higher for RALs today than they were when the DI didn’t exist. That suggests that the entire value of the DI is going to industry participants and none is going to consumers when, arguably, all of its value should go to consumers.

Ernst is laying out the motive for provision of the debt indicator in the framework of a public good.  I don’t think he means to (more…)