(Newswire.net — May 21, 2020) —
Over the past three months, the U.S. has been dealing with the harsh ramifications of the COVID19 pandemic. Those ramifications include a complete shutdown of the U.S. economy, which has created economic hardship for many Americans.
When Congress passed the CARES Act $2 trillion economic stimulus package on March 27, a portion of the bill was designed to get relief checks to qualifying U.S. residents. In the weeks following the passage of the bill, there has been some confusion and ambiguity regarding whether Social Security Disability recipients are part of the qualifying class.
First, the stimulus payments that have been going out to qualifying U.S. citizens are set at $1,200 for each qualifying individual with an additional $500 available for each reported dependent under the age of 17 years old. Anyone who reported income in 2018 or 2019 of over $75,000 (individuals) and $150,000 (married couples) will be awarded a reduced potion to be capped at $99,000 (individuals) and $198,000 (married couples).
As for Social Security Disability recipients, they are included as part of the qualifying class. They are eligible to receive the full $1,200 stimulus in addition to any monies for dependents.
How Will Social Security Disability Recipients Get Paid?
If a Social Security Disability recipient has filed a tax return in either 2018 or 2019, their payment information will be picked up off their filed tax return. As long as banking information was included on the return, the IRS will be able to issue payment in the form of a direct deposit.
In many cases, Social Security Disability recipients are not required to file tax returns. Under these circumstances, the IRS will be tapping into Social Security’s database to get the required banking information. Stimulus recipients can expect a direct deposit to go into the same account in which their monthly benefits are being deposited.
The IRS has stressed that as long as banking information is available through a tax return or the Social Security Administration’s database, no further action will be required of recipients to get a direct deposit. There is one caveat.
The Social Security system does not maintain dependent information. If a Social Security Disability recipient has dependents, those amounts will not be coming via direct deposits without the recipient taking an additional step. See below for the “portal” reference.
What If Banking Information is Not Available?
The IRS anticipates that 90% of all stimulus recipients will be paid via direct deposit because of available banking information. This applies to Social Security Disability recipients as well. If banking information is not available, recipients have two options.
When banking information is not available, the IRS will send out physical checks to each recipient’s listed mailing address. According to the IRS, checks began going out on approximately April 24th.
As part of the check issuance process, the IRS is expecting to send out approximately 5,000,000 checks a week, starting at the lowest income levels until everyone has received their stimulus. The income levels are set in increments of $10,000.
For Social Security Disability recipients who wish to get a direct deposit instead of waiting for a check, a non filers portal has been provided by the IRS where qualified recipients can enter banking information as well as information about dependents.
Note: while the due dates for entering this information have passed, prospective recipients are still encouraged to enter this data as soon as possible. Up until the point when the IRS has actually sent out an actual check, it is always possible the direct deposit information will get picked up. If not, the possibility of subsequent stimulus payments does exist.
Should any Social Security Disability recipient not get paid properly for dependents, they will have an opportunity to claim those monies as a credit on their 2020 tax returns. For normal non filers, they would want to actually file a 2020 return in order to get paid for their stimulus dependents.