IRS, Treasury disburse 2 million more Economic Impact Payments

WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service announced they are disbursing nearly 2 million payments in the fifth batch of Economic Impact Payments from the American Rescue Plan.

Today’s announcement brings the total disbursed so far to approximately 159 million payments, with a total value of more than $376 billion, since these payments began rolling out to Americans in batches as announced on March 12.

The fifth batch of payments began processing on Friday, April 9, with an official payment date of April 14, with some people receiving direct payments in their accounts earlier as provisional or pending deposits. Here is additional information on this batch of payments:

In total, this batch includes nearly 2 million payments with a value of more than $3.4 billion.

More than 320,000 payments, with a total value of $450 million, went to Veterans Affairs (VA) beneficiaries who receive Compensation and Pension (C&P) benefit payments but who don’t normally file a tax return and didn’t use the Non-Filers tool last year.

Nearly 850,000 payments, with a total value of nearly $1.6 billion, went to eligible individuals for whom the IRS previously did not have information to issue an Economic Impact Payment but who recently filed a tax return.

This batch also includes additional ongoing supplemental payments for people who earlier this year received payments based on their 2019 tax returns but are eligible for a new or larger payment

based on their recently processed 2020 tax returns.

This batch included more than 700,000 of these “plus-up” payments, with a total value of more than $1.2 billion.

Another 72,000 payments went to Social Security beneficiaries who didn’t file a 2020 or 2019 tax return and didn’t use the Non-Filers tool last year.

Overall, this fifth batch of payments contains nearly 1.2 million direct deposit payments (with a total value of just under $2 billion) and nearly 800,000 paper check payments (with a total value of over $1.4 billion).

Additional information is available on the first four batches of Economic Impact Payments from the American Rescue Plan, which began processing on April 2, March 26, March 19 and March 12.

A larger percentage of payments was made electronically during this round of payments than during previous rounds.

This accelerated the delivery of payments to millions of American families whose payments would otherwise have been sent by mail.

Over 95% of all Social Security beneficiaries have been paid electronically during this round of payments, compared to 70% in the first round and 72% in the second round.

The IRS will continue to make Economic Impact Payments on a weekly basis.

Ongoing payments will be sent to eligible individuals for whom the IRS previously did not have information to issue a payment but who recently filed a tax return, as well to people who qualify for “plus-up” payments.