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Creditcard.org has released their 2006 Lemon Award for Bad Banking, below you will find the worst of the worst in the banking world.

(1) First time offense gets LIFE at Providian.

Each time you default… we may increase the APRs on your account up to a maximum of the Default APR (31.99%)

Providian has a couple of class action lawsuits (on that topped 400 million). If big tobacco started a credit card company, they’d call it Providian. If there’s a poster child for CreditCard.org Lemon Award nomination, it’d be Providian, the first bank ever to charge you for a credit card credit line.

(2) Zero to 29.99 in 2 hours

“Late is late”, said the Bank of America customer service rep, based in Colorado Springs CO, referring to the fact that the payment posted the day it was due but was hours late.

Each time your minimum payment is late ( i.e. , not received by 2 p.m. , ET, on its Payment Due Date), or the account balance is over-the-credit-limit, we may increase each of your account’s Variable APRs up to the Default APR of 29.99

Bank of America was penalized in a class action suit for “rolling back” payment due dates according to court filings in Delaware . They could squeeze more late fees by rolling back the due date time to 10am and they were caught and penalized by the FTC. Bank of America, this is your first CreditCard.org Lemon Award nomination.

(3) Best Buy Credit Card
Buying the extended warrantee with a Best Buy credit card is, at best, an opportunity to argue for MONTHS whether Best Buy will honor the initial promise of warrantee. Do yourself a favor and avoid the countless complaints by using an Amex for the purchase saying no to the extended warrantee. NOTE: if you do buy it and have a hard time (surprise, they don’t like paying warrantee claims), post your experience at CreditCard.org so that others can see, share and learn from your negative experience

(4) Reverse Mortgages
There’s the saying, “A fool and his money are quickly separated”. Well there’s a theme that the AARP is harking is that, a fool and his house are quickly separated too. Reverse mortgages are also called Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) and they are wrought with traps.

(5) College Credit Cards at the Low Rate of 23.15%
There’s a product being hawked on college campuses. A Visa with an APR of 28.15. The brand they call themselves right now is Clout Visa and “College Credit Card Corporation” gives out t-shirts to get people to fill out applications. Clout Visa, for charging a rate that’s five times higher than the prime rate, you get a CreditCard.org Lemon Award nomination.

(6) Annual Credit Report dot com
Annual Credit Report.com tricks consumers into buying credit score. The original spirit of the site is to comply with FTC mandate that consumers be allowed to view their credit report once a year. What has happened is that Annual Credit Report.com has turned into a nice tidy profit center when adds are blasted and traffic is redirected to sell consumers their credit score. Way to go Big Bureaus!, it shows that the millions of dollars spent on lobbying DOES work. AnnualCreditReport.com turns a legal requirement into a lead generating site and that deserves a CreditCard.org Lemon Award nomination.

(7) Discover Credit Card on campus

According to a October 2, 2006 article in USA Today , student were presented a credit card application without a disclosure box. US credit states in clear terms that consumers must be presented a “Schumer” box that outlines cost, terms and penalties. Discover for breaking the law, you get a CreditCard.org Lemon Award nomination.

(8) FreeCreditReport.com for Not Being Free

It charges for something that’s free at Annual Credit Report.com. Experian (symbol: EXPN.L) owns FreeCreditReport.com gets the Lemon Award for violating federal disclosure laws. The English controlled entity runs ads on US TV, radio and Internet claiming “free reports” but charges $79.95. This CreditCard.org Bad Banking Lemon Award was brought to light by the office of California Attorney General, Bill Lockyer.

(9) Sun Trust Skip-a-Payment Makes Balance Swell.

SunTrust (NYSE: STI) sends customers a “skip-a-payment” offer with a “Merry Christmas, Happy New Year” message. It sounds good to the consumer, but made Nathan Ballred’s balance go from $ 178,000 to over $ 183,000 in a few months. The original loan amount had been $182,000.

All payments were made on-time but SunTrust said balance went up because it was a balloon note and interest wasn’t being satisfied due to the skipped payments they had given. SunTrust said these offers weren’t really good for customers. The bank knew it was a balloon note, so why offer this to someone knowing their balance will go up? SunTrust gets the 2006 CreditCard.org Bad Banking Lemon Award for misleading its customer, Nathan Ballred.

(10) $93 Fee For Tiny Debit Overdraft.
Steve Pullis writes: Regions Bank, a large Regional Bank out of Birmingham, Alabama, has adopted a policy of allowing students (or anyone else) to use their Visa Check Card (debit card) even though they do not have funds to cover the transaction. This is done so that they can reap a $31.00 overdraft fee per transaction.

My daughter is a student at the University of Memphis and overdrew her account by 28 cents, for which she was charged $31.00. She then used it again for a couple of dollars and was charged another $31.00. By the time I was able to catch the problem and let her know that she had no money and was being charged by the bank, she had accumulated yet another overdraft fee of $31.00 for a grand total of $93.00 to cover less than $20 in overdraft amounts. I raised a ruckus with the bank about allowing ignorant college kids to overdraw their accounts, but they basically shrugged their shoulders. Regions Bank (NYSE: RF) gets the 2006 CreditCard.org Bad Banking Lemon Award for charging Steve Pullis’ daughter $93 in fees.

(11) Multiple low credit line accounts, Same Capital One Bank
Capital One (NYSE: COF) gets the 2006 CreditCard.org Bad Banking Lemon Award for putting customers like Brad Kehn over a barrel. Brad writes, “My Capital One visa with a $300 credit limit keeps going over the balance with late fees causing over the limit fees. What’s worse is that we keep getting more Capital One credit cards with similarly low credit lines.”

According to Business Week , Nov 6, 2006 , “When Brad Kehn’s Capital One credit card, it took him only three months to exceed his $300 credit line and get soaked with a $33 over-the-limit fee. But what surprised the Plankinton, South Dakota resident more was that Capital One then offered him another card even though he was over the limit — and another and another.

(12) VistaPrint.com for Un-Authorized Charges

‘Free’ continues to be an expensive word in credit and VistaPrint may be the worst offender. After you order “free business cards”, VistaPrint relays your credit card to some other subscription service that bills you $14.95.

Richard Lee noticed unauthorized charges of $14.95; dated June 20, 2006 and July 20, 2006 . They were for “Passport for Fun”. There are dozens of documented cases against Vista Print at CreditCard.org. VistaPrint.com is the first online merchant to get a Bad Banking Lemon Award.

#1 Sales Tax Deduction – You have a choice this year of deducting your state and local taxes from your federal return or deducting the general sales tax you paid last year on your federal return. This is a no brainer for folks who have no state taxes (nine states apply) and for anyone who made large purchases.

#2 Alimony is Income – Alimony is treated as taxable income so if you received any, you can use it to fund retirement accounts like a Roth IRA. If you’ve paid out alimony, then that amount will reduce your tax burden.

#3 Saver’s Credit – If you don’t make a lot (under $25,000, $50k for married couples) then you get a tax credit of up to $2,000 for any savings you put into a retirement plan.

#4 Make The Most of Losses – If you had a total stock loss in 2005, then you don’t need gains to offset it because you can deduct up to $3,000 from your regular income. For tax purposes, the stock is considered sold on Dec. 31st, 2005.

#5 Move As Much As You Can “Above The Line.” – Above the line deductions reduce your gross income and adjusted gross income (AGI). Most below the line deduction eligibility is tied to your AGI so the more Above The Line deductions you have, the more below the line deductions you’ll be eligible for. business expenses are above the line deductions so if you have a side business or investment, you could look towards that as a way to reduce your AGI.

#6 Ask For An Extension – Not sure how this is a tax break but nearly everyone can get an extension these days. If you owe, you still have to pay by April 17th. If you don’t, you should probably get this done ASAP anyway.

How Do You Qualify For The Deduction?
Essentially there are two tests you must pass for your home office to actually count as a home office:
1. You must use your home office regularly and exclusively for business
In order to take the full deduction, the office itself must be entirely used for business and nothing else.

2. Your home office must be your principal place of business
To qualify as a principal place of business, you must do the most important part of your work in that office OR you must do your administrative or management activities in that office AND you can’t perform those admin and management activities in another office.

How Do You Calculate The Deduction?
Again, there are two methods for calculating the deduction but any “reasonable method” will suffice. I recommend that you go with the percentage use method: measure the square footage of the home office area and divide by the total square footage of your home. Why that one and not the percentage based on the number of rooms? Publication 587 explicitly spells out the percentage rule (page 25) I just explained so it’s a “safer” bet.

How Much Of A Deduction Can You Get?
Here’s the fun part… you can deduct a whole bunch of stuff (whatever percentage you calculated above) like mortgage interest to real estate taxes (jackpot!). Everything is pretty self-explanatory and explained on Form 8829 Expenses for Business Use of Your Home in plain English.