Latest group of stimulus checks to include supplemental payments for some

WASHINGTON — Thursday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service announced in a release that they are disbursing several million more payments in the third batch of Economic Impact Payments from the American Rescue Plan. This brings the total disbursed so far to more than 130 million payments worth approximately $335 billion.

As announced on March 12, Economic Impact Payments continue to roll out in batches to millions of Americans. The third batch of payments began processing yesterday, March 26, with an official payment date of March 31, with some people receiving direct payments in their accounts earlier as provisional or pending deposits. Here is additional information on this batch of payments:

This batch includes the first of ongoing supplemental payments for people who earlier in March received payments based on their 2019 tax returns but are eligible for a new or larger payment based on their recently processed 2020 tax returns. These “plus-up” payments could include a situation where a person’s income dropped in 2020 compared to 2019, or a person had a new child or dependent on their 2020 tax return, and other situations.

The payments announced also include payments for people for whom the IRS previously did not have information to issue a payment but who recently filed a tax return and qualify for an Economic Impact Payment. Payments to this group — and the “plus-up” payments noted above — will continue on a weekly basis going forward, as the IRS continues processing tax returns from 2020 and 2019.
In total, this third batch includes more than 4 million payments, with a total value of more than $10 billion.

This batch of payments contains more than 2 million direct deposit payments (with a total value of more than $5 billion) and approximately 2 million paper check payments (with a total value of nearly $5 billion).

For the first two batches of payments (which began processing on March 12 and March 19), payments were primarily sent to eligible taxpayers who filed 2019 or 2020 returns. People who don’t typically file a return but who successfully used the Non-Filers tool on IRS.gov last year were also sent payments in these first two batches, either as a direct deposit or by paper check or an EIP Card, a prepaid debit card.

A large set of payments will begin going to Social Security and other federal beneficiaries who didn’t file a 2020 or 2019 tax return and didn’t use the Non-Filers tool last year. These payments will go to Social Security retirement, survivor or disability (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) beneficiaries. As announced previously, these payments will begin to be issued this weekend, with the projection that the majority of these payments will be sent electronically and received on April 7.

No action is needed by most people to obtain this round of Economic Impact Payments. People can check the Get My Payment tool on IRS.gov on to see if the their payment has been scheduled. The IRS notes that the Get My Payment tool on IRS.gov will not be updated until the weekend of April 3-4 with information for Social Security and other federal beneficiaries expecting payments next week.

The IRS continues to review data received for Veterans Affairs (VA) benefit recipients and expects to determine a payment date and provide more details soon. Currently, the IRS estimates that Economic Impact Payments for VA beneficiaries who do not 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.