Frequently Asked Questions

Financial Institution Products: RALs and Other Refund Related Items for the Individual Taxpayer

We offer the convenience for you to apply for financial institution products that may possibly deliver sums associated with your refund to you earlier in certain cases. These products will also provide you the possibility of paying our fees from the proceeds of your refund.

We will obtain your application for these products and pass them on to the financial institution that will provide you these products. We are not part of the financial institution, nor does the financial institution have any relation to us other than receiving your application for their products through our site and paying our fee. We provide this service to you as a one-stop-shopping convenience in the event that you desire such products. This is an offered option and is not a mandatory choice for those who are claiming at least a certain level of refund.

The financial products are provided to individual taxpayers by SANTA BARBARA BANK & TRUST (BANK).

Once we convey your application to the BANK, we will have no further control of your refund related proceeds or other dealings with the BANK . Therefore, all your comments and inquiries regarding the processing of the financial institution products will have to be directed solely to the BANK at:

Refund Anticipation Loan Department
P. O Box 1390
Solana Beach, CA 92075
24-Hour Automated Customer Support: 1-800-717-SBBT (7228)
24-Hour Fax Support: 1-858-430-2796
Live Taxpayer Support: 1-877-908-SBBT (7228)
e-mail: ralinquiry@sbbtral.com
On line at http://cisc.sbbtral.com

At this time, two products are offered as follows:

The Refund Anticipation Loan (RAL)

RALs are loans made to taxpayers on the basis of the refund that is anticipated to arrive from the Government. In this case, the taxpayer assigns the total amount of the anticipated refund to the BANK and the Government eventually delivers the refund to the BANK . However, upon BANK approval, the BANK, will deliver the loan proceeds to the taxpayer prior to collecting the actual refund amount from the Government. The amount delivered will be the refund amount reduced by our service/user and application fees plus the BANK 's RAL fees. The BANK may further limit the amount of the loan to lesser values in the certain cases such as those in which the anticipated refund contains Earned Income Credit in excess of certain limits. In such cases, the BANK will deliver any funds received from the government above the amount loaned to you upon receipt from the Government. The advantage of this product may be that, the taxpayer would receive the loan funding earlier than the Government's time of delivery of the refund and also may have our service/user and application fees plus the BANK 's RAL fees out of the refund.

All of the products require that the taxpayer be of at least 18 years of age in order to enter into an agreement. Due to the fact that this is a loan, in the event that your claimed refund is not funded by the Government, you are liable to the BANK for the repayment of the loan. Other requirements and limitations may apply.

FileYourTaxes.com makes no warranties in relation to the amount or delivery times of such loans that may or may not be available to you from the BANK . The RALs may not be available to residents of all states.

Refund Transfers (RTs)

The second product offered is the Refund Transfer Direct Deposit (RTDD). This product provides the delivery of the taxpayer's refund after the BANK receives the refund amount from the Government. The advantage of this product may be that the taxpayer would have our service/user and application fees plus the BANK 's RTDD fees paid out of the refund.

Both of the above products are offered within the assistance of the Debt Indicator program (DI). Both, FileYourTaxes.com and the BANK were industry partners to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) in the Debt Indicator Pilot Program

The DI allows the Government to provide a debt indicator in the acknowledgment (ACK) File which may indicate to the BANK or other recipients of the ACK Files as to whether the taxpayer has certain outstanding monetary public obligations. If any such amounts are owed by the taxpayer, the refund may be applied to satisfy these amounts and not issued to the taxpayer. For this reason, an indicator showing the existence of such public obligations may result in the denial of the RAL product. Denied RAL products will revert to an RT product.

In cases where the refund is not delivered to you by the Government, you are still responsible for the payment of fees to FileYourTaxes.com.

Timing Involved

The following information is provided by the BANK in regards to the funding times:

It takes 2-3 business days from the time the IRS acknowledges your tax return for RAL proceeds to be deposited to your bank account. Allow 24-48 hours for IRS acknowledgement.

Delays in the transfer of money can occur within the Federal Reserve ACH deposit system due to the location of the sending and receiving banks and because the system does not operate on weekends or holidays. For that reason, it may take from 2-3 business days from the time the IRS acknowledges your tax return and BANK approves your loan for your RAL proceeds (total RAL amount minus all fees and charges) to be available in your bank account. Allow 24-48 hours for IRS acknowledgment.

Exclusion

The BANK will not offer RALs in either of the following cases:

1 If you are a regular or reserve member of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps., Air Force, or Coast Guard.
2 If you are a dependent of a member of the Armed Forces on active duty as described above because you are a member's spouse, the member's child under the age of 18 years old, or you are an individual for whom the member provided more than one-half of your financial support for 180 days immediately preceding today's date.

Costs

The fees for the RALs are based on the amount of the borrowed sums. The BANK charges a $12.00 fee along with a finance charge that equals 3.5% of the loan amount not to exceed $100.00. The BANK RT fee is $12.00.

Our application fee for all products is $14.00.

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