Have a Visa or Mastercard, or did you have one between 1996 and 2006? Then you may be due some money from a recent legal settlement related to disclosures and fees related to foreign currency transactions and fees. If you used a Visa, Mastercard or Diners Club card (charge, credit or debit/ATM) issued in the U.S. for transactions in another currency, you are considered a member of the settlement class. To collect you have to submit a claim form, of which there are three options:
- Easy Refund Form for $25 – This is recommended for those who had less than $2500 in foreign transactions or traveled outside of the U.S. for less than a week. It is a pretty simple form which only requires you to provide your name and address and then date and sign. The form doesn’t even appear to require you to certify that you actually traveled outside of the U.S., although reading the background info you are supposed to have had foreign transactions to qualify as a member of the settlement class.
- Total Estimation Refund Form – This one is slightly more complex, requiring you to estimate the number of days spent traveling outside the U.S. and providing information on the purposes of your travel. Based on this information they will estimate your foreign transactions and refund a maximum of 1% of that estimated amount.
- Annual Estimated Refund Form – The most complex of the forms requiring you to provide the account numbers used and annual totals of your foreign transactions on each card. If you are claiming transactions from a corporate card, you are also required to use this form. Note: you are only allowed to claim corporate card transactions if your company has not reached a previous settlement related to this lawsuit or opted-out of the settlement.
The form and information on the settlement is available at http://www.ccfsettlement.com. You may have also received a claim form in the mail, like I did yesterday. The deadline to submit refund claims is May 30, 2008.
Interesting. I received this form yesterday in the mail but didn’t give it much thought. I lived overseas for a few years… I wonder what formula they will use if I file under option 2.
The easy $25 of option 1 would be nice, but option 2 may be the ticket to a bigger amount.
Question: What are the tax implications of accepting money from class-action settlement?
It sounds like the option 2 is supposed to use your travel information to compute some type of average spend, but you are right that it would be nice to know the formula they are using to figure out which option is best. I would guess since they recommend the easy $25 option if you traveled for a week or less that you’d get significantly more using option 2.
I don’t think there would be any tax implications to this since the settlement amount is supposed to represent a refund of the amount of fees you were wrongly charged. If I remember correctly actual damages would not be considered taxable income (unless the damages represent lost income) but any component that was punitive damages (which I don’t believe we have here) would be taxable since it isn’t reimbursing you for an actual loss. I don’t work in tax so you may want to verify it with a tax accountant, but that’s my educated understanding of the issue.
I submitted mine today for the visa card I used while in the Philippines for two years. We’ll see what happens.