Millions of Americans are celebrating a bank account surge: The IRS has sent 127 million stimulus payments that began arriving in bank accounts on March 17.
but if yours hasn’t arrived, don’t worry yet. The IRS will continue to ship more rounds in the coming weeks. this is why you haven’t received your third stimulus payment yet.
Calculator: Calculate how much your third stimulus check could be
1. your payment has not been processed yet
If you haven’t received a direct deposit or physical payment and the IRS Get My Payment tool says “payment status not available,” don’t panic.
On that same page you should also state that “if you receive this message, we have not yet processed your payment or you are not eligible for a payment.”
Eligibility requirements have changed since the last two rounds of payments, so keep an eye on the new numbers to make sure you really qualify this time.
If the message you receive from the Get My Payment tool says “I need more information,” then your payment was returned to the IRS because it was undeliverable. In this case only, people who receive this message can use Get My Payment to enter their correct bank account information. for direct deposit, this includes the name of your bank, your bank account number, and your routing number. do not try to contact the irs by phone to provide bank information.
Know that the IRS only updates the information in the Get My Payment tool once a day, usually overnight, so updating throughout the day will not generate any new information.
2. your contact information has changed since your 2019 tax return
according to the usps change of address request data analytics and moving tools mymove study, 16 million americans temporarily moved during the pandemic; If that’s you, the IRS may not have your last address on file.
And even if you filed your taxes earlier this year, the IRS may not have processed your 2020 tax return. About 6.7 million tax returns are stuck in a backlog waiting to be processed, according to a March 12 washington post story.
If your mailing address has changed, there are several ways to notify the IRS of your new contact information:
- Include the new address when you file your 2020 taxes, and be sure to notify your tax preparer if you use one.
- Fill out Form 8822, Change of Address (for Person, Gift, estate tax returns or generation-skipping transfers) and/or a Form 8822-b, Change of Address or Responsible Party — Business and mail them to the address shown on the forms.
- Send a letter with your name, old and new address, social security number, individual taxpayer identification number or employer identification number, and signature from the irs address on your most recent tax returns.
If the government already sent your payment to an old address, you’ll have to wait until it’s returned to the IRS and see if you can update your information through Get My Payment.
if this is the case, then receiving my payment will show “need more information”, usually two to three weeks after the payment is issued. then, through the tool, you can enter a routing and account number for your bank account, prepaid debit card, or alternative financial product that has an associated routing and account number.
3. you recently changed banks
Maybe you’ve just finalized a divorce, or closed or changed your bank account to avoid fees, or moved to a new state where your old bank doesn’t have branches. Unfortunately, the IRS cannot make a payment to an account it does not recognize.
If your most recent stimulus payment was sent to a closed or dormant bank account, by law, the financial institution must return that payment to the government. the bank cannot hold and reissue the payment if the account is not active, even if you have other active accounts with the institution.
You can’t change the bank information the IRS has on file. you will have to wait until the payment is returned to the irs and then the government will send you a check or debit card, and this may take several weeks.
4. your payment is being mailed
The Internal Revenue Service says that if it has direct deposit information on file for you, that’s how you’ll receive your third stimulus payment. However, even if the IRS has a current bank account on file, you still may not receive your stimulus payment as a direct deposit.
Due to the pressure of tax season and the complexity of 2020 tax returns as a result of pandemic-related tax breaks and other government assistance, if direct deposit returns an error of any kind , your stimulus payment will be sent as a check or, in some cases, as a debit card.
If the IRS does not have your direct deposit information on file, it will send payments by check or prepaid debit card (also known as an economic impact payment card). The Get My Payment tool will indicate that your payment was mailed, but it will not indicate whether you will receive a check or a debit card.
5. mail delivery is still slow
The United States Postal Service (USPS) was hit by delivery delays during the holiday season, exacerbated by high levels of online shopping and thousands of postal workers contracting COVID-19. While delivery times have improved since December, according to the New York Times analysis of a USPS report, only 84% of first-class mail was delivered on time in early March, falling short of the agency’s goal of about 96%.
The IRS announced that it will send another batch of stimulus payments in the mail the week beginning March 22 (this includes stimulus checks and debit cards). If Receive My Payment says your payment has been mailed, be sure to check your mail regularly, especially if it’s not in a secure location. For added protection, consider subscribing to the free USPS service, Informed Delivery. this allows you to preview your mail arriving that day.
You can see what stimulus checks, eip debit cards, and envelopes look like on the irs website.
6. receive social security benefits or do not normally file taxes
if you receive social security benefits or do not earn enough income to file taxes, the irs experienced a delay in validating your eligibility for the third stimulus payment. The IRS had to wait to receive information from the Social Security Administration (SSA) before it could review and verify if I qualified for a payment and for how much.
After receiving the information from the SSA on March 25, the IRS announced on March 30 that most, if not all, Social Security beneficiaries and other federal beneficiaries who do not normally file a tax return and are eligible for a stimulus check, they should receive their payments electronically around April 7.
This includes those receiving Social Security Retirement, Survivor or Disability (SSDI), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and Railroad Retirement Board (RRB) beneficiaries who did not file a 2019 or 2020 tax return. or they didn’t use the no-archiver tool
The IRS announcement also stated that the Get My Payment tool will be updated to reflect this change on the weekend of April 3-4 for those who expect to receive their payments by April 7.