With all the talk about a possible fourth stimulus check, as well as the ambitious $1.8 trillion child care and education agenda President Biden is now pushing, it’s easy to overlook a very important fact related to the third round of stimulus checks that Biden set into motion back in March. Specifically, that those checks, which were for generally $1,400, are still being sent out to US taxpayers — in new batches, on a weekly basis.
The latest batch of new stimulus checks, for example, was just sent out by the IRS, with the tax agency announcing that this new group of payments included 1.1 million payments. That pushes the overall number of stimulus payments issued so far under the Biden administration to about 164 million, with the IRS estimating that those stimulus checks have totaled about $386 billion.
If you were one of the recipients waiting on a stimulus check in this eighth batch of payments, in all likelihood you will have received your payment by now. The IRS says these payments had an official payment date of May 5, with some people receiving them a little earlier in the form of direct deposits. Among some of the highlights associated with this new round of payments:
- The 1.1 million stimulus payments included in this round of checks are valued at more than $2 billion, per the IRS.
- More than 585,000 payments, collectively valued at more than $1.2 billion, went to eligible individuals for whom the IRS previously did not have sufficient information to issue a stimulus check — though these recipients did recently file a tax return.
- This batch of stimulus checks also includes additional ongoing supplemental payments for people who earlier this year received payments based on their 2019 tax returns but who are eligible for a new or larger payment based on their recently processed 2020 tax returns. There were more than 570,000 of these so-called “plus-up” payments included in this eighth disbursement of stimulus checks, with a value of nearly $1 billion. We’ve written in greater detail about the plus-up stimulus payments here, but, basically, they can include payments for such situations as when a person’s income slipped in 2020 compared to 2019, or a person had a new child or dependent listed on their 2020 tax return, among other situations.
- Overall, this eighth batch of payments contains about 600,000 direct deposit payments, with a total value of $1.1 billion, with the remainder of the payments being mailed out as paper checks.
An important note: The IRS is still not finished mailing out stimulus checks as part of the third round of checks to every eligible recipient. Payments are going to continue on a weekly basis going forward. Meanwhile, check out our post from Thursday detailing all the ways taxpayers stand to benefit from new stimulus-related checks and payments from the Biden administration that are in addition to this third round of checks.
