Just a 47-year-old mom of 2 in Northern California. My kids are Monkey Monkey(MM) and Drama Llama (DL). I am married to Monkey Hubby (MH). I am absolutely exhausted (work week from hell). So if this is gibberish, I will fix it later.
The U.S. tax stimulus will be $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent child (under age 17). There is also an income cutoff for receiving these payments. (Just google it, it's all over the news).
Edited to add: The definition of "adult" is mostly someone who is not a dependent. So your college kids are not going to receive the $1,200 and you will not receive $500 for them.
As pointed out to me in my last blog post, you get to keep this stimulus. It sorts out when you file your 2020 tax return if you are owed a bigger stimulus amount (if your income changed, you had a new baby, etc.). But if you were overpaid based on income/dependent changes, you won't have to pay anything back.
Tax Planning Point: They will base these stimulus payments based on your 2019 tax return if it was filed. Based on 2018 if you did not file your 2019 tax return yet. If you had a big jump in income in 2019 and haven't filed yet, you might want to take your time. Not sure how much that helps if it takes 20 weeks to mail out checks. But, I have seen this advice thrown around. I suppose it could be wise to file an extension and not file your tax return until you get your stimulus if that's the case.
The wish of the legislature was to get these checks out in 2 weeks. 🙄 This sounds pretty pie-in-the-sky to me. But I know firsthand the IRS is severely understaffed, and also that many of their workers were sent home. But anyway, I just saw a headline on CNN that the IRS said they need 20 weeks to get checks out. Yes, 20 weeks!
IRS put up a site with some FAQs that I will put at the end of this post. Last I looked (a few days ago) it was mostly, "Check back later for details". In that FAQ they said that if for any reason you didn't file a tax return in '18 or '19, for example if you only had social security income and had no requirement to file, they will set up a simple online process to file a "basic" tax return just to provide the information to get your stimulus check.
Oh yeah, and if you had a direct deposit refund in 2018 or 2019, they will use that information to direct the deposit into your bank account. Direct deposit stimulus payments are expected to be done around April 15th. So if you had a tax refund and chose direct deposit, you might get your stimulus payment in about two weeks. (It's the remaining checks that will take several weeks to process. It will take them 5 weeks to be able to print out the first stimulus checks). On the IRS FAQ they also mentioned setting up some kind of an online form for taxpayers to provide their direct deposit information for a quicker stimulus payment. Details to follow later...
I ended up taking a tax/COVID class yesterday. The tax professionals were pushing back hard. The IRS expecting every fixed-income retired adult to figure out how to request their stimulus?... Tax professionals were insisting there must be a way to cross reference social security records, at the least.
In the end, the IRS has already caved. The IRS will also issue stimulus payments based on social security records. There will still be people who don't file tax returns for various reasons and will have the chance to request their stimulus with some sort of online process, but at least this captures a chunk of the lower income/older population who isn't going to have a lot of help with this stuff in isolation. (& now that I am reading the updated website, they don't have any mention of how you request stimulus in other situations, so it seems to be just changing every day at this point. Who knows).
Economic impact payments: What you need to know
Social Security Recipient Update:
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm967
Some Americans could wait 20 weeks to receive stimulus checks, IRS tells House Democrats
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/02/politics/stimulus-20-weeks-ir...
One final tax thing: IRS has extended tax deadlines from April 15th to July 15th. You will have to check to see if your state has followed suit. There was a lot of back and forth, "What about this and that and this?" Estimate payments, IRA contributions, etc. At this point, it's all extended to July 15th.
Edited to Add: As of April 9th, I see they extended pretty much EVERYTHING, including (June 15th) second quarter estimate deadline. Also finally caved on 3/15 business tax deadlines.
April 3rd, 2020 at 06:50 am 1585893059
April 3rd, 2020 at 01:00 pm 1585915214
1st Quarter 2020 Estimated Tax Payment Due
If you are self-employed or have other first-quarter income that requires you to pay quarterly estimated taxes, get your Form 1040-ES postmarked by July 15, 2020 tax deadline.
April 3rd, 2020 at 01:45 pm 1585917939
April 3rd, 2020 at 05:41 pm 1585932065
April 3rd, 2020 at 07:28 pm 1585938513
"If the advanced rebate received was greater than the credit to which the taxpayer is entitled, the taxpayer is not required to pay back the excess."
April 4th, 2020 at 02:39 am 1585964340
April 4th, 2020 at 01:43 pm 1586004215
April 4th, 2020 at 01:51 pm 1586004691
April 5th, 2020 at 05:11 am 1586059873
April 8th, 2020 at 06:57 am 1586325452
April 10th, 2020 at 02:19 pm 1586524791
April 16th, 2020 at 10:07 pm 1587071236
You can see my latest blog post for the "Get My Payment" website.