While 90% of Americans are eligible to receive the economic stimulus check of up to $1,200, many people have complained that their payment went to the wrong bank accounts; with some even saying their dead relatives got their payments credited to them. The IRS said about 80 million Americans got their payments despatched to them this week, with about 60 million people still waiting to receive their payments.
The IRS disclosed that money was first sent to people they could reach the fastest, and these are people with direct deposit information with the agency – mostly people with a refund on their 2019 or 2019 tax returns. As it stands, the federal tax agency is in the process of distributing $290 billion of the total $2.2 trillion CARES Act stimulus bill in direct cash payments. People who are not able to receive direct cash payments to their accounts will have the money sent to them via paper checks with President Trump’s personal signature.
Many people reported that they have proof that their money had been sent to them, but it got sent to the wrong bank accounts. Some were sent to old bank accounts they no longer use, and some were sent to bank accounts belonging to other individuals. In some cases, the account numbers of the intended recipients did not match with the names on the account numbers.
“I was so confused,” said Aimme Saldana, a 23-year-old California warehouse worker. “I don’t know where they got that number from. I lost two weeks of pay because I was sick. I was depending on that for my car payment.”
Twenty-five-old Thomas Krapin of New York City also suffered the same fate.
“Once I pressed submit, the account number that they listed didn’t match any of mine,” he recalled. “I called my bank and there was nothing they could do. There was no connection to my account.”
IRS spokeswoman Jodie Reynolds said the agency is aware of this problem and doing everything in their power to correct the situation. She assured people that banks would reverse the payments back to the IRS and that paper checks will later be issued to affected persons.
According to CNN researchers, five of the reasons why people have not received their stimulus checks when they ought to have gotten them are –
- People did not receive a federal tax refund in 2018 or 2019
- The tax refund was sent to a temporary account arranged by a tax preparer
- The payment went to an old bank account that’s no longer used
- Paper tax returns were filed in 2019 instead of electronic filing
- Low-income people who are exempted from filing tax returns
Whatever the case, the IRS said they are on top of the matter and that every eligible individual will get his payment even though it takes months to arrive.
Source: cnn.com