Congress recently passed a second round of stimulus checks worth up to $600 per person, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Treasury have already started sending these checks out to some people.
When can you expect to receive your stimulus payment and what should you know about this round of checks? Here’s a quick overview.
Payment information:
The $600 payments are half the size of the $1200 payments issued in 2020. They are available for individuals who make less than $75,000 a year, or married couples making less than $150,000 per year combined.
Parents who claimed dependents on their 2019 tax return will also be eligible to receive a $600 check for each dependent claimed. This means a qualifying family of four would get a total of $2400 in their payment.
If you are an eligible individual for a stimulus payment, you do not need to do anything to claim the second payment—it will be issued to you automatically so long as the IRS has your information on file. If you received a stimulus check the first time around, you can expect to do so again, in the same payment manner.
January 15th cutoff:
With regard to when you can expect to receive your stimulus money, there is a January 15 cutoff date, which meant there were just 17 days from when the first payments were sent out on December 29 to process more than 100 million payments.
This is because the bill passed by congress marked January 15 as the last day to issue these payments. If you do not receive your stimulus money by that date, you must claim all or part of that missing amount hen you file your federal tax return through the IRS’s Recovery Rebate Credit, just as you would with any money you’re still owed from the first round of stimulus checks.
People who will be getting their money via direct deposit shouldn’t have as much to worry about with delays as people receiving physical checks, but any of the payment methods could be subject to delays.
The IRS previously had a tracking tool on its website called “Get My Payment,” which allowed you to track the process of payment issuance, but that feature is currently offline and it is not clear if the IRS intends to revive it for this round of stimulus payments. Should they bring it back, you will need to input some personal information such as SSN, birth date and address. During the first wave of payments, the IRS updated status information once a day.
For more information about the stimulus payments and what you can expect this time around, contact us today at MCG Solutions.