As hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers race to finish their taxes by midnight tonight, many are realizing they will get little or no share of the $168 billion stimulus package Congress passed in February in an effort to jump-start the economy.

Starting next month, most taxpayers will receive $600 a person and an additional $300 for each dependent child. However, the impact in New York and its environs will be muted because of provisions that reduce or eliminate the payment to individuals who make more than $75,000 a year and to couples who make more than $150,000.

“Regionally, that hurt us,” a professor of economics at Hunter College, Howard Chernick, said. “We have more people and more income at the high end than really any other place in the country.”

An economist with the Tax Foundation in Washington, Gerald Prante, said it was likely that more than a third of married couples living in Manhattan would get no direct relief from the stimulus. Census Bureau data show that 33.4% of married Manhattanites make more than $200,000, while only 5.7% of married couples in America reach that income threshold. “That should give people an idea with the stimulus package of why it may not be hitting New York,” he said.

A Senate version of the stimulus would have been more generous to the region by sending full payments to single taxpayers making up to $150,000 and couples with up to $300,000 in income. Lawmakers said the so-called phaseouts were intended to avoid subsidizing the wealthy and to deliver more economic stimulus by sending checks to Americans who would spend the money rather than saving it. The top 5% of earners pay nearly 60% of all federal income taxes, though lower-income Americans pay a greater share of Social Security and Medicare taxes.

Mr. Chernick noted that while salaries tend to be higher in New York, costs are higher, too. “$300,000, for a certain idea of living, that’s just enough to get by here,” the professor said. “We all laugh at that, but that is the reality.”

Mr. Chernick said New Yorkers were likely getting a disproportionate benefit from recent cuts in marginal federal tax rates and in taxes on interest and dividends. However, he said those benefits were being undercut by the alternative minimum tax, which has the effect of reducing or eliminating the tax deduction for local income and property taxes for couples making between about $150,000 and $500,000. “The AMT is taking a vicious hit at what we call middle-income New Yorkers,” he said.

Those who do qualify for the stimulus and whose returns are processed by today will get their money by direct deposit in early May or by check somewhere between mid-May and mid-July, a spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service, Kevin McKeon, said. Numbers from earlier this month show returns coming in at about 9% faster than last year. Mr. McKeon said that might reflect people filing earlier in the hopes of getting their stimulus check sooner. However, the surge also includes elderly taxpayers who don’t usually pay income tax but need to file a return this year in order to get the one-time bonus.

Pro- and anti-tax activists, as well as proponents and opponents of changes in the way Americans file their taxes, are trying to harness the April 15 deadline.

Several anti-tax groups are planning a press conference in Washington today to highlight the tax burden. “We’d like to have people talking about taxes every day and politicians would like people talking about taxes never,” Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform said.

Mr. Norquist’s new book, “Leave Us Alone: Getting the Government’s Hands Off Our Money, Our Guns, Our Lives,” argues that Republicans can prevail in November if they stick to a strict line in favor of tax cuts and limiting government spending. A decidedly different perspective is available in another well timed book, “10 New Excellent Reasons Not to Hate Taxes.”

The editor, Stephanie Greenwood, said the anti-tax movement will not find much resonance as Americans grow increasingly nervous about job losses and health care costs. “In times…of economic uncertainty and economic downturn, there’s a much greater awareness of the importance of the government’s role in the economy,” Ms. Greenwood said. “Tax benefits are always harder to see than tax costs. You run your tap water…Your first thought is not, ‘My tax dollars at work.'”

Jockeying over the mechanics of filing taxes also played out yesterday as a trade group, the Computer & Communications Industry Association, warned that allowing taxpayers to file electronic returns directly with the IRS would cost $132 million and involve “a significant risk of failure,” given the number of federal computing projects that have become fiascoes.

A professor of tax law at Stanford University, Joseph Bankman, said the study was endorsing what amounted to a subsidy of online tax preparation firms like Intuit and H&R Block.

“It’s a pretty good business to be in,” he said. “Everyone who wants to file electronically, the only way to file electronically is through you.”

Last year, about 57% of people filed online, some through programs offered free to low-income Americans. New York taxpayers who insist on filing or seeking an extension the old-fashioned way can do so until midnight at the James Farley Post Office on Eighth Avenue or the Main Post Office in the Bronx at 580 Grand Concourse.