OK so I had a bit of a surprise the other day, I received my stimulus tax rebate check, but it was not for the amount I expected.

The check I received was for $600 and not the expected $1200. Given this, I started to do some digging to try to find out why I was shortchanged. Here are the qualification criteria for the rebate.

– More than $3000 in qualified income.

– Less than $150,000 joint income.

– Net Income Tax Liability more than $600

Now the first two criteria were no problem, so it must be the ‘Net Income Tax Liability’ criterion. After a bit more digging, it turns out that because both my wife and I are self-employed we pay ‘Self-Employment Tax’ and not ‘Income Tax’. While self-employment tax counts towards the Qualified Income criterion, it does not count towards the Net Income Tax Liability. So while we paid several thousand dollars of tax on our income, it was the wrong type of tax.

Can anyone explain why self-employment tax should not qualify, because I am totally baffled. I would image that there an awful lot of upset self-employed people out there at the moment.