If you are wondering what has happened to your tax refund or to the stimulus rebate, you can check their status on the IRS Web site. The IRS has two Web services to track these funds:

• Where's My Tax Refund? and
• Where's My Stimulus Payment?

You'll need some information from your 2007 tax return so the IRS can verify your identify. So have a copy of your 1040 handy when using these Web services.

I certainly think privacy is very important. And tax information in particular ought to remain completely confidential. If for no other reason than it's one less piece of information that marketers and identity thieves can get a hold of. But some state governments in the US have been releasing sensitive tax information in an attempt to shame high profile individuals into paying their taxes. Making the news rounds is a story of how the Italian government released tax return information not just for people who are past due in paying, but "posted the returns for all 40 million Italians who paid taxes in 2005," according to this report from the New York Times.

Here in the United States, tax return information is confidential under federal law. There are stiff penalties for tax professionals or IRS agents who disclose tax information without your explicit authorization. Some states, however, post the names and addresses of people or businesses who are in arrears in paying their taxes. And even federal tax debts can become a matter of public record if the IRS files a tax lien against you.

So what can you do to ensure that your tax privacy is protected? It helps to begin by identifying who has access to your tax and financial records. Make sure your accountant and family members understand this information is confidential and ought not to be disclosed. Accountants are required to maintain the confidentiality of your records, and so you might want to review any privacy policies they have. Second, make sure your tax records and any electronic files are password-protected, or stored to a secure media. For example, you might want to place PDF documents and tax software files into a ZIP file that's protected by a strong password. And, finally, if you are in a situation where you owe taxes, make sure you set up a payment arrangement as soon as you can. This will help prevent the government from releasing your contact information on their Web site and may prevent them from filing a lien against you.

I just found out about a new attempt by scammers to steal bank information from taxpayers. Apparently some people are being called on the telephone and asked to verify their bank account information for the stimulus rebate.

If you receive a call, you can safely assume the caller is up to no good. The IRS does not call taxpayers (or email them) to initiate any sort of communication. If the IRS needs additional information or wants to tell you about a correction or discrepancy, they will send you a letter. Here's the Service is saying about this new telephone scam:

"Some people have received phone calls about the economic stimulus payments, in which the caller impersonates an IRS employee. The caller asks the taxpayer for their Social Security and bank account numbers, claiming that the IRS needs the information to complete the processing of the taxayer's payment. In reality, the IRS uses the information contained on the taxpayer's tax return to process stimulus payments, rather than contacting taxpayers by phone or e-mail."

As for tips for handling such a call, the Prime Time Money blog has this suggestion: "If someone calls and says they are from the IRS or Social Security Administration (SSA) and they need information from you just hang up the phone. The IRS and SSA already have all the information they need on you, and they certainly wouldn’t call you up to ask you."

As for email scams, those are easy to identify too. The IRS has adopted a policy of never initiating contact via email, and so all emails claiming to come from the IRS can be safely ignored. Or better yet, you can forward the email to a special IRS inbox so the agency can track down the perpetrators at phishing@irs.gov. The agency prefers if you "show all headers" in the email before forwarding it, and they provide instructions on how to do this.

The Treasury is apparently ahead of schedule for sending out the economic stimulus rebates. These additional tax refunds were scheduled to start going out on May 2nd, but are now going to be sent starting April 28th, according to an announcement from the White House. Kay Bell has posted a revised calendar of when the checks will be sent, either via direct deposit or through the mail.

In her article, Bell also noticed that in this first round of rebate checks will be mailed out during the 4th of July week. "How convenient that the last of the mailed checks will go out Independence Day week. Surely that's just serendipitous ... Not!" And the Associated Press has noticed that the President discussed the rising cost of gasoline and groceries, a shift from his earlier comments about boosting consumer spending. "By saying expressly that people could use these one-time checks to pay for such necessities as food and gas, Bush underscored the deepening challenges facing the economy."

Personally, I have a pretty good idea of what I'll use my own rebate check for. It will sit in my savings account for month or so, and then go right back to the feds when I pay my second quarter estimated taxes. Other friends, clients, and business colleagues have said they will use the rebate either to pay their taxes or pay down their credit cards. And this echoes the results of a poll conducted by About Financial Planning. When asked "What would you do with the proposed tax rebate?," forty-five percent of respondents said they would use the money to pay off debt.

For the official information about the rebates, see the following IRS Web pages:

• Economic Stimulus Payments Information Center
• Economic Stimulus Payment Calculator

The deduction for mortgage interest is one of the most popular and well-known tax breaks available. A little less known is that the deduction has some limits, which generated a recent question on the message boards.

The basic idea is you can deduct interest on a loan of up to a $1 million if the proceeds are used to buy, build, or improve a home. You can also deduct interest on a home equity loan of up to $100,000. In the tax law, a home equity loan is any loan whose proceeds are not used to buy, build or improve a home. So most people naturally remember this $1.1 million dollar limit.

The question posed by the reader got me to thinking. There's another limit for home equity loans. The interest may not be deductible if the loan amount exceeds the fair market value of the home. And that means some people who have seen their homes decrease in value might end up with mortgage interest that isn't fully deductible. That's a heart-wrenching thought when every dollar of tax savings can really help. The point to remember is this only applies to home equity loans, not to "acquisition debt." So if you're home as declined in value and your only loans were for buying, building, or improving the house, then you will be able to continue deducting your interest.

Hopefully you've filed a return or asked for an extension of time to file. The next steps are to make sure you stay on top of your tax situation for 2008.

The most immediate concern is checking on the status of your refund. If your refund hasn't been deposited to your bank account or been mailed to you in the three to four weeks after you filed, you can check its status on the IRS Web site using the Where's My Refund application. You should allow at least 7 days from the time you file your return before checking with the IRS.

You will also want to find out how much of the stimulus rebate you might receive later this summer. The IRS has an Online Stimulus Payment Calculator. Simply type in some numbers from your completed tax return and you'll see how much of an additional rebate you'll be receiving. The IRS has also posted a schedule of when these payments will be sent out.

Now may be the time to adjusted your paycheck withholding. By adjusting your withholding, you'll make sure that you have just enough money deducted from your paycheck to cover your taxes, but not too much to have a huge refund, nor too little to have a sizable balance due. You can calculate how many withholding allowances to claim using the IRS' withholding calculator, and then use those figures to fill out a new W-4 and submit it to your employer's payroll department.

You will also want to keep your finished tax returns in a safe place. You'll want to keep a copy of the return, plus any supporting documents, for at least three years. That's how long the IRS has to ask any additional questions (a.k.a. audit) your return. Along with the actual return itself, you will want to retain copies of any tax software you downloaded or purchased, in case you need to run the software again to make changes. My own tax drawer has been growing lately, and so I've decided to save copies of my returns in a PDF file format, along with scanned images of my supporting documents. This could be easily stored on a thumb drive and put in a safe deposit box as a backup copy in case I lose my paper files.

Six minutes: that's how long it took me to electronically file an extension and send payment to the IRS. And that included having to retype information because I wasn't reading the data screen too carefully and walking to the file cabinet to grab the checkbook so I could make a payment. Both TaxACT and TaxCut (links below) enable you to e-file your extension. TurboTax will print out the extension form but won't e-file it. So in terms of getting an extension form actually to the IRS computers tonight, it looks like TaxACT and TaxCut are the best options.

• TaxACT free extension e-file and related instructions
• TaxCut extension e-file (not free, requires payment of at least $19.95) and related instructions

There's some free tax software options if you need to prepare your returns. Shelley Elmblad, About.com's expert on financial software, reviews the free file version of TaxCut, and I took a look at the TurboTax Free File edition. Both programs are available through the IRS Free File program, this program allows software manufacturers to place restrictions on who can use the software without charge.

There's also really free software available that's not offered through the free file program. The choices here are Tax Cut Basic and Turbo Tax Free Edition, both of which should serve the needs of individuals with relatively straightforward tax returns. Shelley reviewed the TurboTax version and found that it is a "plain vanilla tax software, but does not skimp on support." TaxACT offers offers free software in the standard version. In my review of TaxACT, I said that it's "great all-around software program" -- even if some of the data entry screens could be tightened up a bit for faster input. Nonetheless, you really cannot argue with free software, especially since all three programs do a good job of preparing your tax returns.

Here's the direct links to the products so you can get started

• TaxACT Standard
• TaxCut Basic
• TurboTax Free Edition

Here are five things you need to do now, if you haven't already done so:

1. File an extension, and the IRS will grant you another 6 months to file a return.
2. Use tax software or one of the IRS Free File software providers to finish up your tax return.
3. Pay your taxes by credit card using Official Payments or Pay 1040, or mail your payment along with your extension form.
4. Check the status of your tax refund on the IRS Web site.
5. See how much of the stimulus payment you will qualify for using the Online Stimulus Payment Calculator.

The federal government spends about $3.1 Trillion dollars a year. Just where does that money go?

Jess Bachman answers that question every year with his amazingly detailed poster entitled Death and Taxes, which displays data about the federal discretionary budget. Here you'll find information about various federal programs and departments, with larger graphics indicating larger dollar amounts. It's a great way to explore exactly where our leaders have decided to spend our tax dollars. Bachman displays portions of the poster on his Web site: Wallstats.com.

Even though I have this poster hanging in my office and I look at it every day, it's still hard to imagine three trillion dollars. It's even harder to imagine just what goes into that accounting of federal spending. Kimberly Amadeo, About.com's economics expert, has put together a collection of articles about the budget. One thing I learned, although I guess I sort of knew this, is that the government makes assumptions about how much revenue it will generate and what directions the economy is taking. This will make for interesting after-tax-season reading for me, since this is one part of the government process that I don't understand as well as I should.

And this reminds me of the famous quote by Benjamin Franklin about death and taxes. I looked up the full quotation, which is much more interesting than I remember: "Our Constitution is in actual operation; everything appears to promise that it will last; but in this world nothing is certain but death and taxes."