United States
In the United States, taxpayers can apply for a refund anticipation loan through a paid professional tax preparation service, where a fee is typically charged for the preparation of the tax return. In the United States the Internal Revenue Service rules prohibit basing this fee on the amount of the expected refund. An additional fee is usually charged by the service for originating a bank product and establishing a short-term bank account. By law this fee must be the same on both loan and non-loan bank products, and in 2004 the average fee was $32. The bank through which the loan is made charges finance charges.
According to the National Consumer Law Center, 12 million taxpayers used an RAL in 2004. With e-filing and IRS partnerships that help consumers e-file for free, U.S. taxpayers can receive their tax refunds within three weeks and as quickly as ten to fourteen days if they choose to receive their refund via direct-deposit. This has rendered RALs less attractive to some.
Read more about this topic: Refund Anticipation Loan
Famous quotes related to united states:
“The United States is unusual among the industrial democracies in the rigidity of the system of ideological control—’indoctrination’ we might say—exercised through the mass media.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“... when we shall have our amendment to the Constitution of the United States, everyone will think it was always so, just exactly as many young people believe that all the privileges, all the freedom, all the enjoyments which woman now possesses were always hers. They have no idea of how every single inch of ground that she stands upon to-day has been gained by the hard work of some little handful of women of the past.”
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“When Mr. Apollinax visited the United States
His laughter tinkled among the teacups.
I thought of Fragilion, that shy figure among the birch-trees,
And of Priapus in the shrubbery
Gaping at the lady in the swing.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“Vanessa wanted to be a ballerina. Dad had such hopes for her.... Corin was the academically brilliant one, and a fencer of Olympic standard. Everything was expected of them, and they fulfilled all expectations. But I was the one of whom nothing was expected. I remember a game the three of us played. Vanessa was the President of the United States, Corin was the British Prime Minister—and I was the royal dog.”
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“Hollywood ... was the place where the United States perpetrated itself as a universal dream and put the dream into mass production.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)