The IRS is just days away now from doing something it’s never done before in the post-coronavirus stimulus era. The tax agency, starting July 15, will kick off a temporary series of direct stimulus payments that recur on a monthly basis. And we’ve got all the details you need to know in this latest stimulus check update.
Millions of families are set to receive either $250 or $300 checks for each eligible child they have. The IRS also shared an important update about all this in recent days.
Stimulus check update
First, a quick recap of the main points to know.
What’s coming are six monthly checks, starting July 15 and ending with a December 15th payment. A previous IRS tally estimated that some 36 million Americans, at least, are eligible to get these payments. Payments, we should add, which aren’t really tantamount to a fourth stimulus check. Even though that’s how they’re structured.
In fact, these are advance payments of half of a tax credit. The $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation Congress passed in March, among other things, expanded the federal child tax credit. So that, now, families with children under age six can get up to $3,600 per child. For kids between the ages of six and 17, the amount is $3,000 for each child.
Half of that amount is coming to families next year as a tax credit. But we’re still living in hard times stemming from the coronavirus pandemic. So rather than make families wait for the full amount, half of it is being out now — albeit stretched out over the six checks.
More details to know
Along these lines, meanwhile, the IRS has a portal on its website you’ll definitely want to visit if you haven’t already.
The tax agency will send out the new stimulus checks to whatever it has on file for you. Either to your bank, as a direct deposit, or to your address as a paper check. The Child Tax Credit Update Portal on the IRS website lets families easily update their bank account information, if direct deposit is how you’d prefer to get this payment.
For the July 15 payment, families will get their stimulus check according to whatever details the tax agency already has on file. Any update to your stimulus check payment details made at that portal before August 2, however, will apply starting with the August 13 payment and to all payments after that.
This portal also makes it easy if you’d like to stop the monthly payments and get the money all at once, in the form of the tax credit next year. Read more here about why some families might want to do that.
A final, important note to add to this stimulus check update: The IRS is sending most of these six checks out on the 15th of each month. Except for in August. That’s because the 15th falls on a Sunday that month, so the payment will instead come that Friday, the 13th.
