IRS made 2.2 million additional stimulus payments

• The IRS just disbursed 2.2 million additional stimulus payments.
• The majority of these payments went to taxpayers whose information had not yet been filed with the IRS.
• These late payments are gradually being spread amid large backlogs in tax returns.

Another 2.2. million Americans will start receiving stimulus checks of $ 1,400 this week.

The third round of stimulus payments, intended to help people who lost income or jobs during the coronavirus pandemic, is worth more than $ 4 billion, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

The latest disbursement brings the total number of payments to 171 million, according to an IRS press release on Wednesday.

The majority of the 2.2 million payments went to eligible people who had not previously filed information with the IRS for an economic impact payment, but who have since filed a tax return.

In March, as part of President Joe Biden’s US bailout, some Americans began receiving stimulus checks of $ 1,400, in addition to federal and state unemployment if they were eligible. People earning less than $ 75,000 per year were eligible to receive the full amount.

People who received a stimulus payment in March due to their 2019 tax return, but have since met the new payment requirements with their 2020 tax returns, can also receive stimulus funds.

The disbursement is part of the third wave of one-off checks the federal government has authorized since the start of the pandemic. Congress approved $ 1,200 stimulus checks early last year, and the IRS sent out most of them within a month.

Lawmakers then backed sending a $ 600 relief check as part of a pandemic assistance program in December. The IRS sent 147 million payments to all eligible taxpayers it had on file in less than two months.

This week’s announcement by the IRS highlights the tremendous pressure the agency has been under over the past year as it struggles to sort through a backlog of unprocessed tax returns, along with other news pandemic responsibilities such as the issuance of three waves of direct payments.

The IRS says it will continue to make these economic impact payments over the next few weeks, primarily for eligible people with new tax return information and other qualifiers.

While there have been some calls for a fourth round of stimulus, critics maintain that the additional federal support has contributed to a delay in hiring as businesses begin to recover and more jobs return to work. the economy.