Posted by
Annie Hamilton on Thursday, November 19, 2009 12:00:00 AM
For folks in the state of California, this tax season was a bit different than usual. Certainly we filed our taxes as usual and things went off without a hitch on the federal side but everyone received notice from the State (as long as they were owed money that is) that the state was effectively broke) and that the State would be issuing IOU's instead, IOU's that wouldn't be honored until sometime later.
Months later, those owed returns received the IOU's in the form of warrants, with written instructions and dates.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a group of large banks in California would not be accepting the IOU's from clients. The banks include the "bailed out four-horsemen of the financial crisis: Citigroup, Bank of America/Merrill/Countrywide, JPMorgan Chase/Bear Stearns/WaMu, and Wells Fargo/Wachovia"
There are instructions that came with the warrants where people can turn them into the state, registered return reciept, but it seems ridiculous to be forced to do this when these the banks were bailed out with OUR tax dollars.