Schwinn 2009 WL 161622 (Bankr.D.Kan.)

Economic stimulus payment that Chapter 7 debtors received postpetition was included, in its entirety, in estate.

Regardless of whether an economic stimulus payment that debtors received following the commencement of their Chapter 7 case was treated as a refund of taxes paid in the immediately preceding year or as an advance refund of taxes that the debtors had paid and were still in the process of paying for the tax year in which the petition was filed, the entire stimulus payment was included in the "property of the estate," without any need to prorate the payment between pre- and postpetition periods. The refund bore no relationship to the debtors' postpetition income or wage withholdings, but was in the nature of a payment to which the debtors were entitled on the petition date, based on the fact that, when their petition was filed, Congress had already enacted the economic stimulus legislation, and the debtors, by filing a tax return for the prior tax year, had done everything required of them in order to obtain the economic stimulus payment.