The Internal Revenue Service plans to begin issuing Economic Impact Payments to Social Security recipients and other federal beneficiaries this weekend after weeks of delay.
Approximately 30 million payments to Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Railroad Retirement Board and Veterans Affairs benefits recipients have been waiting for their $1,400 stimulus payments to arrive after President Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act into law this month to help people cope with the economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. The IRS didn’t have their direct deposit or mailing address information on file because many of them have low incomes and aren’t required to file a tax return, and because it was waiting for the Social Security Administration to send over the information. A group of House Democrats have pressed the IRS and Social Security to start distributing the payments and last week gave the Social Security Administration a 24-hour ultimatum to send the necessary information over to the IRS (
“After receiving data from the Social Security Administration on Thursday, March 25, the IRS began the multi-step process to review, validate and test tens of millions of records to ensure eligibility and proper calculation of Economic Impact Payments,” said the Treasury in a news release. “If no additional issues arise, the IRS currently expects to complete that work and to begin processing these payment files at the end of this week. Because the majority of these payments will be disbursed electronically — through direct deposits and payments to existing Direct Express cards — they would be received on the official payment date of April 7.”
The IRS has been using prior-year tax return information to send the stimulus payments since the CARES Act last March. Last year, the IRS created a non-filers tool on its IRS.gov website where people who don’t normally file tax returns could enter their information to receive the stimulus payments, but the tool was closed down last year and hasn’t been revived yet this year. The treasury said that many federal beneficiaries who filed 2019 or 2020 returns or used the non-filers tool last year have already been issued Economic Impact Payments, if they’re eligible, during the past three weeks. The payments that will be going out this week are for Social Security, Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) beneficiaries who didn’t file a 2019 or 2020 tax return or did not use the non-filers tool.
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“IRS employees are working tirelessly to once again deliver Economic Impact Payments to the nation’s taxpayers as quickly as possible,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig in a statement. “Our teams immediately began processing data we received last week for federal benefit recipients. We know how important these payments are, and we are doing everything we can to make these payments as fast as possible to these important individuals.”
The IRS said it’s continuing to review data received for Veterans Affairs (VA) benefit recipients and expects to determine a payment date and provide more details soon. It currently estimates that Economic Impact Payments for VA beneficiaries who don’t regularly file tax returns could be disbursed by mid-April. VA beneficiary payment information will be available in the Get My Payment tool at a future date. More information on these payments was also released Tuesday on IRS.gov.
