Ready for another wave of new stimulus checks? We noted yesterday that this week has already given us a bevy of updates along these lines, including word of new stimulus payments coming this fall in California. The IRS is also about to send out a few million tax refunds that are a byproduct of March’s $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation. And, on Thursday, the tax agency will finally begin mailing out and depositing a long-awaited new series of stimulus checks for an estimated 36 million families.
Let’s talk about what’s coming, and what you need to know.
New stimulus checks tomorrow
If you’ve checked out any of our posts over the last several months, you’ll know we’ve been sharing incremental updates about these forthcoming checks for a while now. That’s because it’s a major new stimulus effort that’s about to get underway, impacting a huge number of Americans.
Here are the highlights to know:
The stimulus payments coming on Thursday will be the first of a series of six monthly checks — and, more specifically, they’re actually an advance payment of a tax credit. This means that Thursday’s payment doesn’t technically count as a fourth stimulus check. Even though, sequentially, it comes after the third checks for $1,400 that started to be distributed a few months ago.
These new stimulus checks will generally be for either $250 or $300, per eligible child. For each child under age six, parents get the larger amount. And the amount will be $250 for each child between ages 6 and 17.
Five more checks
After Thursday, families can also expect five more stimulus checks in this series. “Families” being the operative word here, since the checks are exclusively dependent on whether a household includes children.
The five checks will arrive on the 15th of each month through December, except next month. Since August 15th falls on a Sunday, that month’s payment will be backed up to Friday, August 13.
Visit the Child Tax Credit Update Portal available at IRS.gov if you need to update the bank account details that the tax agency has on file for you. If the IRS doesn’t have your bank account on file yet, your payment Thursday will come as a paper check. If you add a bank account before August 2, it will apply to the August 13 payments. As well as to the remaining stimulus check payments after that one.
One final note: We mentioned that these new stimulus checks are really an advance payment of a tax credit. Each family has actually been approved for a single amount, stemming from an expansion of the federal child tax credit. Half of that amount is being paid early, in the form of these six stimulus checks. The other half will come next year, as a tax credit once federal tax returns are filed.
