Sep. 27—ALBANY — Your inflation refund check is in the mail — or nearly there.
On Friday, from a school gymnasium in the capitol city, Gov. Kathleen C. Hochul announced that the inflation rebate checks she lined up in this year’s state budget are going out to eligible recipients starting now. It could take a while for them to arrive, she cautioned, and said the last checks will be delivered in late November.
“If your neighbor gets it and you don’t, don’t start calling us,” she joked to the assembled crowd. “Give us October and November, okay? I don’t know the logic behind all this, but this is what I’m told is the timeframe.”
The refund is based on the 2023 tax year; anyone who filed their state income tax for that year and makes within the qualifying threshold will automatically get a check in the mail to the address the state has in their taxpayer profile.
Single filers who make less than $150,000 will get a $150 check, those who make less than $75,000 will get $200. Married, joint filers will get up to $400 if they make less than $150,000, and those who make less than $300,000 will get $300.
An estimated 156,000 north country residents will get a check, and overall about 8.2 million New Yorkers will get one.
Hochul said the money came as she was working in her budget this year to free up about $5000 in the budget of the average New York family; coupled with a moderate tax cut for middle-income earners, an expansion of universal free school lunch and breakfast, and a separate expanded child tax credit. Because of inflation driving prices up, she said the state collected between $2 and $3 billion more dollars in sales tax revenue than had been anticipated. Hochul said it wouldn’t have been responsible to use it on a long-term spending commitment, or to keep it in the state’s hands.
“So I said, why don’t we give that back to New Yorkers?,” she said.
The checks are a tax credit, meaning that people who may not have filed a state income tax return for 2023 because of a lack of income are still eligible; all they need to do is file their 2023 return and any refunds owed to them will be sent.