Today is the day for new stimulus payments.
Around four months after the passage of the $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation in March, which already gave us a third wave of $1,400 stimulus checks, here comes another round of payments. The IRS on Thursday will begin sending out stimulus checks tied to an expansion of the federal child tax credit, one of the many other features of the March legislation. The checks will give qualified families — an estimated 36 million of them — between $250 and $300 per eligible child. And that’s not all.
New stimulus payments today
A key feature of the payments that start going out today is that they’re actually the first of several. The first of six, to be more exact.
Each month starting today through December, another of these child tax credit-related new stimulus payments will be sent out. Payments come either in the form of an electronic direct deposit into a bank account or as a paper check.
The payment structure is as follows. Each eligible family will have been approved for a specific child tax credit amount. The stimulus law expanded the amount up to a maximum of $3,600 for every child a family has under the age of 6. And the amount will be up to $3,000 for each child between age 6 and 17.
Whatever a family’s final amount is, it will be cut in half. They’ll get the second half next year, in the form of a tax credit after they file their federal taxes. The first half is coming this year, stretched out over the six checks that start today. Depending on the ages of each families’ children, that means the monthly checks, at a minimum, will either total $1,500 altogether (6 checks x $250 each = $1,500) or $1,800 (6 checks x $300 each = $1,800).
Other key details
To take the guesswork out of what’s coming for qualified families, they should have already received two letters from the IRS. One, letting the family know that they’re eligible for these payments. And the second, a more personal snapshot of what’s coming for the family, and when.
The dates of these payments will, as today shows, be on the 15th — with one exception. Since August 15th falls on a Sunday, the IRS is backing that payment up to Friday, August 13th.
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 first new stimulus payment will come as a paper check. If you add a bank account before August 2, it will apply to the August 13 payment. As well as to the remaining stimulus check payments after that one.
