Third stimulus check: Does the new batch of $ 1,400 include "plus-up" payments?

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced on Wednesday that another 25 million stimulus checks, worth $36 billion, were sent out in the most recent tranche of direct stimulus payments.

Around 24 million of those payments were sent as direct deposit with the remainder sent as paper checks. According to the IRS approximately 85 percent of the payments in the third round have been made via direct deposit, eight percent more than in the second round and 11 percent more than the first round.

The IRS sends out more “plus-up” payments

Although there was much talk of a third round of stimulus checks they weren’t authorized until tax season was well underway. This meant that the IRS had to go off the information the agency had available when they issued the payments which could’ve been a 2019 tax return. As the IRS processes the millions of tax returns it’s receiving daily, the agency is adjusting for the difference between 2019 and 2020 filings.

Now the IRS is sending supplemental “plus-up” payments to the stimulus checks already sent out for taxpayers that are newly eligible or that were due a larger stimulus check. In the fourth batch of payments the tax agency sent out an additional 1 million of these payments. The IRS will continue to send out these supplemental payments weekly as it continues processing tax returns from 2020 and 2019.

Who was included in the fourth batch of stimulus checks?

One group that had been anxiously waiting to receive their stimulus finally saw them arrive. After the second batch of payments went out questions began to arise over why some 30 million Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and Railroad Retirement Board beneficiaries and veterans, who receive Compensation and Pension (C&P) benefit payments, had not received their payments. This group don’t normally file a tax return and hadn’t filed for 2019 or 2020, nor had they used the Non-Filers tool, available last year, to claim money that was missing from the first round of payments.

After congressional inquiries into the matter, payment files that were missing from the Social Security Administration were sent to the IRS allowing the payments to be processed. However, payment files from Veterans Affairs still need to be processed , which the IRS expects to do by the end of the week. Absent any problems, those payments should be received by 14 April. VA beneficiaries expecting a payment can track their payment via the Get My Payment tool starting 10 April.