Still no December/January stimulus check. What to do?

February 7, 2021 6:15 AM

My husband's $600 stimulus check arrived on 15 January; mine still has not. How and where do I report this?

1) I have already filed my 2020 tax return and missed seeing the recovery rebate credit line when I did so.
2) I definitely qualify to receive the check.
3) I'm reasonably certain that it wasn't direct deposited, as my most recent bank statements don't show it and I've never, as far as I know, given the federal government my account number.
4) When I first checked (a couple days after my husband's check arrived), the "Get My Payment" button at the IRS website said there was insufficient information to tell me what was happening with my payment; in the last week or two it's been giving me an "access denied" page.

posted by Spathe Cadet to Law & Government (8 answers total)

I think this is like the last round of stimulus checks; you'll just have to be patient and wait it out. Continue to check the "Get My Payment" tool and monitor your bank account. You may need to file an amended 2020 return once everything is processed.

I know it's frustrating. Last time it took MONTHS for us to get our payment and I could never get the tool to work. The second round was direct deposited the first week. Michelle Singletary writes about financial matters for the Washington Post. Google her stories as she has lots of practical advice about the stimulus payments and tracking them down. I hope your situation is resolved soon.
posted by XtineHutch at 7:51 AM on February 7, 2021 [2 favorites]

The IRS is not accepting returns until February 12th. Can you review and change your 2020 return? Your $600 may be contained in your refund (IRS says it will show on line 30) or you may be able to fill out the recovery section.
posted by soelo at 8:35 AM on February 7, 2021 [5 favorites]

I couldn't get the tool to work either, apparently because the wrong info was on the tax return compared to what I thought it should have had.
posted by jenfullmoon at 12:10 PM on February 7, 2021

Call your representative. One thing your representative's staff should do is help with issues like this. Have a friend with the same issue, they called their representative and got some help.

One other question: did you get a super-janky fake-looking credit card in the mail? That may have been your stimulus payment. That's how mine came and my mom nearly threw it away. It really, really looks like a scam, but it's not.
posted by rednikki at 4:04 PM on February 7, 2021

My 1rst round was finally DDed in October. 2nd round was supposed to DD Jan 6th. Because of this ask I just checked and it now says scheduled to be mailed last Friday. It doesn't make any sense.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 7:43 PM on February 7, 2021

And it got here today. I'd just keep checking the IRS site for an update.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 10:23 AM on February 8, 2021

I'm just chiming in to say my check arrived on Thursday. The first round made it to my account much faster. I'd all but given up on ever seeing the second one. There may still be hope!
posted by easy, lucky, free at 6:28 PM on February 9, 2021

Response by poster: A month later, nothing has happened. I called the IRS number for economic impact payment specific questions yesterday and was told I could send an amended return to claim the EIP, but the amended return form (1040-X) has no spot on it for the EIP, and some of the instructions on the IRS website say that you should not send an amended return unless you know for sure that your first return has been received and processed.

Which I cannot know, because the EIP line is very emphatic about not having access to any individual tax records (all they do is look up your question in a book and then read a rapid monotone answer to you while preparing what is apparently a large meal in their extremely echoey kitchen; I wish I were kidding) and the regular line claims there are so many calls they're not even attempting to answer them but invite me to call back some other time. Also the IRS website says

It’s taking us longer to process mailed documents including:

Paper tax returns, and
All tax return related correspondence.

We are processing all mail in the order we received it.

Do not file a second tax return or call the IRS.

and also

most individuals eligible for the Recovery Rebate Credit have already received the full amount in two rounds of payments, known as Economic Impact Payments. All Economic Impact Payments have now been issued. . . . If you’re eligible for the credit, and either we didn’t issue you any Economic Impact Payments or we issued less than the full amounts, you must file a 2020 tax return to claim the Recovery Rebate Credit even if you are not required to file a tax return for 2020.

so the EIP line told me to do the thing that the website tells me not to do, but also tells me I have to do it, even though I've already done it?

I didn't get a card in the mail. I'm hesitant to call my representative for Reasons. Obviously didn't get it together to file a new return before the IRS started processing returns and possibly would have screwed everything up worse if I had. The Get My Payment tool stopped giving me an error page, but tells me they either don't have sufficient information or I'm not eligible (and I am definitely, no question about it, eligible).

I marked the question resolved by mistake but it is definitely, emphatically NOT resolved.
posted by Spathe Cadet at 5:35 AM on March 10, 2021