The IRS just made a major announcement about stimulus checks

A couple million Americans finally have a new stimulus check coming their way from the IRS.

The tax agency has announced that it just pushed out nearly 2 million stimulus payments that comprise the seventh batch of checks stemming from the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief legislation that President Biden signed into law last month. This follows the sixth batch of payments (which also comprised another 2 million of the $1,400 stimulus checks) that we told you about after the IRS sent out that batch last week. Including these newest payments, this brings the total number of checks distributed thus far to 163 million stimulus payments, with an approximate value of $384 billion. Take another look at that number, by the way, before we move on. This whole thing is ostensibly called a stimulus program, in that it’s meant to stimulate the economy once we all spend our checks, but that, of course, is only what happens at the end of the chain of events. What actually sets all this in motion is a breathtakingly large transfer of wealth, comprised of the government simply handing Americans a few hundred billion dollars.

Here, meanwhile, are some additional facts about this latest batch of stimulus checks that was just distributed:

As we noted, this batch has almost 2 million checks that total, in aggregate, more than $4.3 billion.
The IRS says that more than 1.2 million of these payments, with a value of more than $3 billion, went to eligible individuals for whom the IRS previously didn’t have the information it needed in order to issue the individual a stimulus check (though these people did recently file a tax return).
This batch of payments also included more than 730,000 so-called “plus-up” payments, with a value of over $1.3 billion. Such plus-up payments are a corrective that push out more money to a recipient depending on a status change, something you can read more about here in one of our earlier posts on this topic.
Overall, this seventh batch of payments contains about 1.1 million direct deposit payments, with a total value of $2.5 billion, and another 850,000 paper check payments, with a total value of more than $1.8 billion.

The IRS will keep distributing these batches of stimulus checks on a rolling weekly basis going forward. If you’re still waiting on your $1,400 stimulus check, check the Get My Payment tool on the IRS website for an update on when it will arrive. Meantime, also check out the link below for more details about an altogether separate stimulus-related benefit that President Biden called for in his joint address to Congress on Wednesday night. It’s an extension of the monthly federal child tax credit payments through at least 2025.