Social Security recipients and other Americans who don’t normally file a tax return can expect their stimulus payments to be processed this weekend, the Treasury Department said Tuesday.
Many of the payments will be sent electronically and will be in bank accounts by April 7, CNBC News reported.
The Internal Revenue Service started issuing the third stimulus payments in mid-March — but deposits for an estimated 30 million people who get Social Security, Supplemental Security Income and Railroad Retirement benefits have been delayed because the Social Security Administration lagged in sending the IRS the information it needed, CNBC reported.
The IRS received the information last week after a group of lawmakers prodded the SSA to send the necessary information.
“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,” the agency said in a statement, CNBC reported.
Many people in this group will receive their payments electronically, through direct deposit or to their Direct Express card.
The agency also said it expects to send stimulus payments to Veterans Affairs beneficiaries by mid-April.
The announcement comes after House Democrats last week sounded the alarm over delays in the delivery of the third round of cash payments to some veterans and Social Security beneficiaries.
In a letter to IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig and SSA Commissioner Andrew Saul, four Democrats, including the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, urged the agencies to accelerate the distribution of payments to those individuals.
“The American Rescue Plan was intended to provide much-needed economic stimulus and assistance to people across the country – immediately – and we are counting on your agencies to ensure that beneficiaries are not left behind in the seamless delivery of those payments,” the letter stated.
The lawmakers blamed Saul, who was nominated by former President Donald Trump, for the delays, which “defied congressional intent and imposed needless anxiety and pain on taxpayers.”
But Saul, in a statement, attributed the delay to a lack of funding and political red tape that prevented the administration from working with the Treasury Department or IRS before the American Rescue Plan was passed.
The SSA sent the missing files for about 30 million people to the IRS last Thursday, and the agency subsequently began the “multi-step process to review, validate and test tens of millions of records to ensure eligibility and proper calculation” of the check, Fox News reported.
Since President Biden signed into law the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill, known as the American Rescue Plan, the IRS has already delivered checks to 127 million Americans, Fox News reported.
Source: Newmax
