Dividend checks continue to get fatter in corporate America, as more companies jack up their distribution rates.

Readers of the Income Investor newsletter can certainly appreciate that kind of thinking. Let's take a closer look at some of the companies that inched their payouts higher this past week.

Let's start with Raytheon (NYSE: RTN). The high-tech defense giant's best offense is a meatier payout. Raytheon's new quarterly rate of $0.50 a share is a 16% improvement over the $0.43 a share it was shelling out every three months. This is the eighth year in a row that Raytheon comes through with a hike.

International Bancshares (Nasdaq: IBOC) is also generating interest with its move. The banker with 217 branches throughout Texas and Oklahoma boosted its semiannual distribution by 5% to $0.20 a share. International Bancshares is also beefing up its efforts to return money to investors by expanding its share repurchase program.

Fulton Financial (Nasdaq: FULT) is another banker cutting fatter checks. The Pennsylvania-based company's quarterly disbursement of $0.07 a share is a 17% increase. A lot of financial services companies have been juicing up their yields since regulators released the latest stress test results earlier this month.  

Finally we have Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) making the biggest splash of all. The world's most valuable technology company wasn't even paying a dividend when it scheduled a special press conference for last Monday.

Along with a massive $10 billion stock buyback that Apple will dive into next fiscal year, the iEverything consumer tech behemoth will begin distributing $2.65 a share as a quarterly payout starting next month.

Checks and balances
Subscribers to the Income Investor newsletter can appreciate the companies sending more and more money to their investors. The newsletter singles out companies that are committed to growing their distributions with market-thumping results.

Want to see what is being recommended these days? Go ahead and give the newsletter service a shot with a 30-day trial subscription. Who knows? Maybe the next thing that will get hiked will be your interest.

If you want to track these stocks to see if and when they hike their payouts again, consider adding them to MyWatchlist.