WBIR: [1]

Taxpayers and tax preparers are discovering that anyone who elected to have tax preparation fees deducted from their tax refund will not receive rebate checks via direct deposit.

The problem relates to funds being routed to the tax preparer's third-party bank. UPDATE: Based on the additional information in comments and thinking about this a little further, the IRS is handling this exactly right. What it boils down to is that some taxpayers, either by getting a refund loan or having preparation fees deducted from their refund, had the third-party preparer's bank account listed as their direct deposit bank, and the third party is then responsible for disbursing the funds to the taxpayer. In the case of the "rebate," the third party preparer may not be setup to accept it or disburse it, so the IRS is doing the only other thing they can do which is to mail those taxpayers a check directly instead of depositing it in some tax preparer's bank account. So this sounds like one of those "that's a feature, not a bug" situations, and the right thing to do. UPDATE: This and other questions answered in a recently updated IRS Economic Stimulus Payments FAQ [2].