Bank Account Bonuses: What a $300 Offer Is Actually Worth
Banks pay for new deposits, and the offers are real money. What the advertisement leaves out is the arithmetic: the tax, the interest your cash gives up while it sits in a low-rate account, and the hours spent repointing every payment that still lands in the old one.
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Banks buy deposits the way airlines buy passengers, and the currency is the same: a number on a landing page, paid once, in exchange for your money sitting still. Three hundred dollars for opening a checking account is real money, and the offers are not a trick.
They are also smaller than they look, and larger than they look, depending on how much cash you are moving. The arithmetic takes about five minutes and decides both questions.
What a bank counts as a bonus
The word has a legal definition. Under Regulation DD, the rule that implements the Truth in Savings Act, a bonus is a premium, gift, award or other consideration worth more than $10, in cash, credit or merchandise, given to a consumer during a year in exchange for opening, maintaining, renewing or increasing an account balance.[1]
Three things are deliberately left out of that definition: interest, anything worth $10 or less in a year, and fee waivers or reductions.[1] The exclusions matter more than they sound. A bank that waives a $12 monthly fee for a year is handing you $144, and none of it is a bonus, so none of the disclosure rules below apply to it. A toaster is not a bonus either, unless the toaster is a good one.
Offers generally come in three shapes. Cash for a qualifying direct deposit, which is what most checking promotions are. Cash for a balance held for a period, which is what most savings promotions are. And tiered offers, where the payment scales with how much you bring. All three are bonuses under the rule, and all three have to be disclosed the same way.
The arithmetic of a $300 offer
Take a common structure: $300 for opening a checking account, making two qualifying direct deposits, and keeping $5,000 in it for 90 days. The headline is $300. Two subtractions come off it before the money is yours.
The first is tax, covered below. The second is the interest that $5,000 did not earn while it sat in a checking account. The FDIC puts the national average rate on interest checking at 0.07%.[4] Over 90 days, $5,000 at that rate earns 86 cents. The same money in 13-week Treasury bills, which yielded a coupon equivalent of 4.27% on September 24, 2026, would have earned about $53.[5] The gap, roughly $52, is the real cost of the parking requirement.
- $5,000 held for 90 days
- Two qualifying direct deposits
- $66 federal tax at a 22% rate
- $52 of interest the money did not earn
- Before any monthly maintenance fee
- Before the hours of switching
$182 on $5,000 over 90 days works out near 15% annualized, which is better than anything cash earns honestly. The annualized figure flatters it, though, because you cannot point the same $5,000 at a new bonus every quarter forever. There is a finite supply of banks, most offers are restricted to people who have not held an account there recently, and each one costs you an afternoon.
Run the same subtraction across a few offers and the pattern shows up immediately: the bigger the balance an offer demands, the more of the bonus the parking requirement eats.
| Offer | What it requires | Forgone interest | Tax at 22% | Net |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $200 checking | $2,500 for 60 days, direct deposit | $17 | $44 | $139 |
| $300 checking | $5,000 for 90 days, 2 direct deposits | $52 | $66 | $182 |
| $700 savings | $50,000 for 120 days | $641 | $154 | −$95 |
Forgone interest compares the account's assumed rate (the FDIC national average of 0.07% for checking, 0.37% for savings) against a 13-week Treasury bill at 4.27%. Your own numbers depend on the rate the new account actually pays, your marginal tax rate, and your state. The point of the third row is the shape, not the cent.
The third row is the one worth staring at. A $700 bonus is more than twice the $300 one, but it asks you to leave ten times the money in an account paying a national-average savings rate, and that is enough to turn the whole thing negative. If the account pays a competitive rate, the row flips back to positive. The rate of the account you are parking in matters more than the size of the bonus.
The bonus is once, the rate is every year
A bonus is a single payment. A rate is a payment that repeats for as long as the money stays. People chase the first and ignore the second, which is backwards for anyone with a real balance.
Those national averages are weighted by deposit share, so they are not a verdict on the best account available. They are a description of where American cash is actually parked, which is mostly in accounts paying close to nothing.[4]
The comparison that decides it: a $300 bonus is worth the same as improving your rate by one percentage point on $30,000, for one year. Move $20,000 from a 0.37% savings account to something paying around the Treasury bill yield and the difference is about $780 a year, every year, with no direct deposit requirements and no expiry date.
That is also the reason to know what your cash is for before you move it. Money that has a job (the three-to-six month cushion described in our guide to sizing an emergency fund) needs to stay liquid and insured, which rules out locking it behind a 180-day balance requirement at a bank you are not sure you will keep.
Five terms the advertisement must tell you
Bonus offers are regulated advertising, not free-form marketing. When an advertisement states a bonus, Regulation DD requires it to also state, clearly and conspicuously, the annual percentage yield using that term, the time requirement to obtain the bonus, the minimum balance required to obtain the bonus, the minimum balance required to open the account where that is higher, and when the bonus will be provided.[3]
Separately, before you open the account, the bank has to give you the amount or type of the bonus, when it will be provided, and any minimum balance and time requirements attached to it.[2] Those disclosures have to arrive before the account is opened or the service is provided, and if you are not standing in a branch, within ten business days.[2]
| What the rule requires | What to actually check |
|---|---|
| The annual percentage yield | What the account pays after the promotion ends, which is the number you live with |
| The time requirement | Both clocks: the deadline to qualify, and how long the balance must stay afterward |
| Minimum balance to obtain the bonus | Whether it is an average balance or a daily minimum that one bad day breaks |
| Minimum balance to open | Whether it is higher than the qualifying balance |
| When the bonus will be provided | The gap between qualifying and payment, which is often 60 to 90 days |
Regulation DD § 1030.8(d) sets the left column for advertisements stating a bonus. The right column is what experience suggests you read it for.
Disclosure rules are not self-enforcing. In the FDIC’s Spring 2026 supervisory report, the Truth in Savings Act and Regulation DD accounted for 74 cited violations in 2025, placing it among the five most frequently cited consumer rules. The most common problem was institutions failing to provide accurate disclosures, and two sections (the requirement to make disclosures clearly and conspicuously in a form you can keep, and the account disclosure rules that cover bonuses) together made up 61% of them.[6]
The bonus is taxable, and the bank reports it
A bank bonus is not a gift in the tax sense. It is interest income, it is taxed at your ordinary rate, and it generally arrives on a Form 1099-INT alongside whatever interest the account paid.
The IRS addresses the noncash version directly. If you receive goods or services for opening an account or making deposits, the value may be reported to you as interest income on Form 1099-INT. For deposits of less than $5,000, gifts or services worth more than $10 must be reported as interest; for deposits of $5,000 or more, the threshold is more than $20. The value is the bank’s cost, not the retail price.[7]
The IRS gives a worked example: deposit $800, earn $20 of interest, receive a $15 calculator, and the Form 1099-INT shows $35 of interest for the year, all of which is reportable.[7] A cash bonus works the same way, which is why $300 at a 22% federal marginal rate is $234 before your state gets involved.
What switching actually costs
The bonus is paid for opening an account. The work is in everything that still points at the old one, and this is where switching goes wrong: not in a lost bonus, but in a missed autopay and a late payment on a credit report.
- 1Open the new account and read the two deadlinesThe date by which you must qualify, and the date after which you can close the account without losing the bonus. Put both in a calendar before you do anything else.
- 2Move the direct deposit, then wait for it to landA qualifying direct deposit is usually defined narrowly, often as payroll or government benefits rather than a transfer you push yourself. Confirm one has actually posted before you touch anything else.
- 3List every recurring charge and repoint itCard-on-file subscriptions, utilities on autopay, loan and card payments, rent, insurance premiums, and any peer-to-peer app with the old account attached. This list is longer than anyone remembers.
- 4Run both accounts in parallel for one full cycleLeave a buffer in the old account and watch what still lands there. A quarterly or annual charge will not show up in month one, which is the strongest argument for waiting.
- 5Close the old account deliberatelyOnly after the bonus has posted, the clawback window has passed, and a full cycle has gone by with nothing hitting the old account. Get the closure confirmed in writing.
Two practical notes. Deposits are automatically insured to at least $250,000 at each FDIC-insured bank, so spreading balances across institutions raises your total coverage, at the cost of more accounts to watch.[8] And a bonus account you keep out of inertia is how a $12 monthly maintenance fee quietly outgrows the $300 you were paid: that fee is a recurring charge like any other, and it belongs in the same audit as the streaming services in the fifteen-minute subscription check.
Before you open the account
The step nobody does well is the third one, because it requires a complete list of what charges your account every month, and memory is not a list. Your transaction history is.
LumaLedger detects repeating charges across every linked account and shows them on the Recurring page, with the cadence, the next expected date and any price change since last time. Work down it, repoint each one, and the annual charges you would otherwise discover in eight months are on the list today. The new account shows up alongside everything else on the Net worth page, so the balance you are contractually holding is visible rather than remembered.
A bank bonus is worth taking when the balance requirement is small relative to your cash, the account you are parking in pays something reasonable, and you have an hour for the switching. It is worth skipping when the offer is really asking you to move a large balance into a low-rate account for four months. The better long-run move is usually the boring one: a higher rate on whatever you already hold, and a higher share of your income kept each month, neither of which expires.
LumaLedger links your banks and cards, finds every recurring charge, and keeps a true double-entry ledger of your net worth. It’s free during the private beta.
Open your ledgerFrequently asked questions
Are bank account bonuses taxable?
Yes. A bank bonus is treated as interest income rather than a gift, and banks generally report it to you and to the IRS on Form 1099-INT. IRS Publication 550 covers the noncash version directly: for deposits under $5,000, a gift or service worth more than $10 must be reported as interest, and for deposits of $5,000 or more the threshold is more than $20, valued at the bank's cost. You owe tax at your ordinary income rate, and you owe it whether or not a form arrives.
How much is a bank bonus really worth?
Subtract two things from the headline number: the tax you will owe at your marginal rate, and the interest the required balance would have earned somewhere else while it sat in the new account. A $300 bonus for parking $5,000 for 90 days comes to about $182 after federal tax at a 22% rate and about $52 of forgone interest, before any monthly fee.
How long do I have to keep the money in the account?
It varies by offer, and the answer has to be disclosed. Regulation DD requires an institution to give you the amount or type of the bonus, when it will be provided, and any minimum balance and time requirements, before you open the account. Common structures ask for a qualifying direct deposit within 60 to 90 days and a minimum balance held for 90 to 180 days after the bonus posts.
What happens if I close the account early?
Many offers let the bank claw the bonus back, or charge an early closure fee, if the account closes within a set window after the bonus is paid. That window is part of the terms you receive before opening, so read it and put the end date in a calendar. Closing early can also strand recurring payments that you already moved to the new account.
Does opening a bank account for a bonus affect my credit score?
A checking or savings account is a deposit account, not a credit account, so the account itself does not appear on your credit reports and the bonus has no effect on your score. Some banks do check your credit when you apply, so read the application to see whether it says the check is a soft or a hard inquiry.
Sources
- 1.Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Regulation DD (Truth in Savings), § 1030.2 Definitions (accessed September 2026).
- 2.Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Regulation DD (Truth in Savings), § 1030.4 Account disclosures (accessed September 2026).
- 3.Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Regulation DD (Truth in Savings), § 1030.8 Advertising (accessed September 2026).
- 4.Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, National Rates and Rate Caps (September 21, 2026).
- 5.U.S. Department of the Treasury, Daily Treasury Bill Rates (September 24, 2026).
- 6.Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Consumer Compliance Supervisory Highlights (Spring 2026).
- 7.Internal Revenue Service, Publication 550, Investment Income and Expenses (2025) (March 2026).
- 8.Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Deposit Insurance (accessed September 2026).
This article is for general education and isn't financial, tax, or legal advice. Figures come from the sources cited above as of their publication dates; examples use illustrative numbers.
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