INDIANAPOLIS — Indiana residents gave varied responses when asked what they plan to do with their piece of the federal tax rebate checks that will arrive in homes in May or June.

6News spoke with dozens of people about the checks. One of the most popular responses was that they plan to use it to pay higher property taxes.

Others said they plan to save the money, but that’s not what the federal government hopes most people will say.

Under the plan, most households will get up to $600, with an extra $300 per child. Low-income workers would get $300.

Butler University economics professor Bill Reiber said the stimulus package is designed to ward off a potential recession.

“Taxpayers have more money to spend and business will have incentives to invest in new plants and equipment,” Reiber said.

However, the stimulus part of the plan won’t have as much impact if most people decide to save or to use the money to pay down the massive debt many households have.

About 30 percent of the rebates are slated to go to the poorest of the working poor who have not paid federal income tax.

Some Hoosiers said they are bothered by what they called the redistribution of wealth.

“If they don’t make enough to pay tax then they shouldn’t get a rebate,” one person said.

The rebates will go to 117 million families.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under Local News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.