The second round of stimulus checks could soon begin reaching bank accounts after President Donald Trump signed the $ 900 billion stimulus bill. He last minute signing it was a welcome development for 6 out of 10 people who have suffered a financial setback due to the pandemic, but millions of people may be disappointed if they are part of groups that do not meet the requirements for payment.
Most likely the checks will do $ 600 for each adult and child, or half the amount of the $ 1,200 checks sent earlier this year. Payments of $ 600 per person are part of the stimulus bill passed by Congress in December and signed by Trump on the evening of December 27th.
Still, Mr. Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have called on lawmakers to increase the amount to $ 2,000 per adult, a request that Wall Street analysts say has little chance of moving forward, given in count the additional hundreds of billions of dollars the amount would cost.
In drafting the latest stimulus bill, lawmakers have tried to correct some issues that restricted the payment of the first stimulus checks earlier this year. For example, the distribution of the second stimulus control will include the so-called “mixed state” immigrant families, or families where U.S. citizens are married to immigrants without Green Cards, a group that was prevented from receiving checks earlier this year. Under-17s will receive the same $ 600 pay as adults, compared to $ 500 in the first round.
“Children will be eligible for the same amount of benefit as eligible adults and families with members of mixed immigration with a valid social security number for a spouse are also eligible for payments, as opposed to allowances from the CARES Act, ”the Tax Foundation noted.
However, the income limits of the most recent stimulus package are slightly different from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Financial Security Act (or the CARES Act), which will cause more middle-class families to receive help. And there are some groups that overlooked the first round of controls that will also miss a second control.
The main ones are: 17-year-old dependent children and adults who declare themselves dependent on another person’s tax return, as is usual in college students.
Below are the groups of people who will not receive a $ 600 check in the second round.
Children in charge of 17 years
The $ 900 billion stimulus package targets $ 600 for each child in a family, as long as they are considered “qualified children” under the IRS tax code for the child tax credit. Unfortunately, for parents of older teens, the tax code defines “qualified children” as those under the age of 17.
In other words, the $ 600 will go to children 16 and under.
The IRS will use people’s 2019 tax returns to determine their incentive payments, meaning teens who have turned 17 in the second half of 2020 (after the tax return in the IRS) could still qualify.
Adult dependents, from college students to seniors
According to the Tax Foundation, no dependent adult will be eligible for the $ 600 check.
This means that most college students, who are often claimed by their parents as dependents, will not be able to get the checks. This surprised some college students, who expressed their frustration on social media. Many are struggling with a range of pandemic problems, from food insecurity to the loss of income from campus jobs that was reduced due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Older adults, from the elderly to people with disabilities, who claim to be dependent, are also excluded, a topic that some social networks called “a slap”.
Adults and seniors with disabilities who declare themselves dependent often face higher costs due to issues such as higher medical expenses.
Single people earning more than $ 87,000
The second round of checks will have the same type of phasing out of income as under the CARES Act, with incentive check payments reduced by earnings in excess of $ 75,000 per single person or $ 150,000 per married couple.
The amount of payment individuals receive will be reduced by $ 5 for every $ 100 of income earned above these thresholds, according to the House Appropriations Committee.
But this formula, when combined with the smaller amount of $ 600 in checks, means that the income threshold for receiving money will be lower: single people earning more than $ 87,000 will not qualify, compared to the threshold for receiving money. phasing out $ 99,000 for CARES law applicants.
Married couples earning more than $ 174,000
For a similar reason, married couples will face a lower income threshold for receiving $ 600 checks. Couples who earn more than $ 174,000 will not get any payment, below the 198,000 of the CARES law.
In general, almost everyone in the bottom 80% of the U.S. income distribution will receive a check, according to the Tax Foundation estimate. The proportion of applicants who will receive a check decreases for people with incomes that place them among 20% of employees, with very few taxpayers in the first 5% qualified, according to the Tax Foundation.
Of course, even if they don’t receive the $ 600 themselves, single people and couples with incomes above these thresholds will still receive payments for their children, as long as those children are under 17 years old.