A little more than two million Americans are about to get a new stimulus check over the next couple of days or so, if they haven’t already.
The IRS, which is continuing its incremental distribution of waves of stimulus payments following March’s enactment of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, just shared another big stimulus check update: Specifically, that a new wave of more than 2.3 million payments just got sent out, bringing the total number of checks distributed thus far since March to more than 169 million payments. And altogether, since those payments started rolling out on March 12, the checks have in the aggregate transferred more than $395 billion from the federal government to American taxpayers.
This latest wave of more than 2.3 million payments, according to the IRS, encompasses more than $4.2 billion that’s landing right about now in mailboxes and bank accounts as electronic direct deposits. And here are some additional fast facts about this new tranche of checks:
- Per the tax agency, “More than 900,000 payments, with a value of approximately $1.9 billion, went to eligible individuals for whom the IRS previously did not have information to issue an Economic Impact Payment but who recently filed a tax return.”
- The IRS says this also includes “additional ongoing supplemental payments” for people who earlier this year received payments based on their 2019 tax returns but who were eligible for a new or larger payment based on their recently processed 2020 tax return. These are the so-called “plus-up payments,” which we wrote about here. Over the last two weeks, more than 1.1 million of those were distributed, with a collective value of more than $2.5 billion.
- Year-to-date, more than 8 million of those supplemental payments have been distributed by the IRS.
- Finally, it’s also worth noting the breakdown of the new wave of stimulus checks that were sent out over the last two weeks. More than 1.2 million were direct deposited into recipient bank accounts (those totaled more than $2.2 billion, collectively,) while the remainder were sent to recipients in the form of paper checks.
Also, don’t forget: Starting on July 15, an entirely new wave of stimulus check disbursements will begin. The same legislation that made these previous stimulus checks possible also included an expansion of the federal child tax credit, which will give families up to $3,600 for each eligible child, an amount that will be broken down into monthly payments.
Starting July 15 and once a month through the end of this year, families will receive a monthly check of as much as $300 for every qualifying child under the age of 6, and up to $250 per month for every qualifying child between the ages of 6 and 17. The checks will be distributed on the 15th of every month through December, except in August — the 15th of that month is on a Sunday, so the check will be sent out on Friday, August 13.
