Third stimulus check: how many Americans have already received the payments?
The IRS has confirmed that another round of $1,400 direct payments has been sent, but how many were distributed and who is yet to receive their stimulus check?
The IRS and US Department of the Treasury confirmed on Wednesday that a new round of 25 million stimulus check payments had been completed, taking the total number distributed to over 156 million.
Four weeks after the first payments were made on 12 March, shortly after the American Rescue Plan was signed into law, the vast majority of recipients have had their stimulus check and a total of approximately $372 billion has been paid out.
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New batch of payments sees Social Security recipients finally get their stimulus checks
The statement released this week by the IRS confirmed that the majority of recipients of the latest wave of payments would be Social Security beneficiaries, who had been missed out of previous rounds.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) did not share the relevant individuals’ details with the IRS for weeks, preventing the tax authority from processing the payments. It took a letter from four Congressman in late March for the logjam to be shifted and the SSA finally passed over the necessary data.
The latest wave of payments saw more than 25 million stimulus checks, with a total value of over $36 billion, sent out to the following groups:
- Social Security beneficiaries - More than 19 million payments, with a total value of more than $26 billion, went to Social Security retirement, survivor or disability (SSDI) recipients.
- Supplemental Security Income beneficiaries - Over 3 million payments, with a total value of nearly $5 billion.
- Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) beneficiaries - Nearly 85,000 payments, with a total value of more than $119 million.
- Recipients of “plus-up” payments - Over 1 million supplemental payments for people who were underpaid in a previous round of stimulus checks, with a total value of more than $2 billion.
- Recent stimulus check qualifiers - More than 1 million payments, with a total value of nearly $3 billion, went to people who recently filed a tax return that made them eligible to receive a stimulus check. Many of these will have also received retroactive payment for previous rounds.
Who will receive their stimulus check next?
The next priority for the IRS will be recipients of Veterans Affairs (VA) and related programmes such as the Compensation and Pension (C&P) benefit. This group have also been excluded from previous rounds but the tax authority have confirmed that they expect to begin processing payments this week.
A statement released on Wednesday said: “If no additional issues arise, the IRS expects to begin processing these VA payment files at the end of this week. Because the majority of these payments will be disbursed electronically, they would be received on the official payment date of April 14.
“The IRS projects VA beneficiary payment information would be available in the Get My Payment tool this weekend, April 10-11.”