Third round of stimulus checks go out

The Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service announced at the end of March the disbursement of several million more payments in the third batch of Economic Impact Payments from the American Rescue Plan.

A total of 130 million payments were disbursed so far, equating to approximately $335 billion as of March 26, according to a release from the IRS.

The rollout of the Economic Impact Payments will continue in batches with the third round beginning on March 26.

The IRS states, “This batch includes the first of ongoing supplemental payments for people who earlier in March received payments based on their 2019 tax returns but are eligible for a new or larger payment based on their recently processed 2020 tax returns. These “plus-up” payments could include a situation where a person’s income dropped in 2020 compared to 2019, or a person had a new child or dependent on their 2020 tax return, and other situations.”

The payments also include those for people for whom the IRS previously did not have information to issue a payment but who recently filed a tax return and qualify for an Economic Impact Payment. Payments to this group — and the “plus-up” payments noted above — will continue on a weekly basis going forward, as the IRS continues processing tax returns from 2020 and 2019.

The third round of payments includes the over 4 million payments with a total value of over $10 billion.

The payments include those to direct deposit and paper checks.

The processing for the first round of payments began on March 12 with the second round starting later that month and were primarily sent to eligible taxpayers who file 2019 or 2020 tax returns.

“People who don’t typically file a return but who successfully used the Non-Filers tool on IRS.gov last year were also sent payments in these first two batches, either as a direct deposit or by paper check or an EIP Card, a prepaid debit card,” the IRS states.

As of March 26, “A large set of payments will begin going to Social Security and other federal beneficiaries who didn’t file a 2020 or 2019 tax return and didn’t use the Non-Filers tool last year. These payments will go to Social Security retirement, survivor or disability (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) beneficiaries. As announced previously, these payments will begin to be issued this weekend, with the projection that the majority of these payments will be sent electronically and received on April 7.”

Most people don’t need to take action to obtain the third round of EIS payments. Individuals can check the Get My Payment took at irs.gov to see if their payment was scheduled.

The IRS continues to review data received for Veterans Affairs (VA) benefit recipients and expects to determine a payment date and provide more details soon. Currently, the IRS estimates that EIS for VA beneficiaries who do not regularly file tax returns could be disbursed by mid-April. VA beneficiary payment information will be available in the Get My Payment tool at a later date.