Millions of vulnerable Americans still waiting on the latest round of $1,400 federal stimulus payments will see the delayed funds appearing in their bank accounts by next week, the U.S. Department of the Treasury said Tuesday.
A "majority" of the impacted group, which includes the country’s elderly, disabled and veterans, are projected to receive them "on the official payment date of April 7," the agency added.
It's a delay that Congressional lawmakers called "inexplicable" last week.
The stimulus payments have been noticeably absent for these Americans because the Social Security Administration - tasked with sending the recipients’ information to the Internal Revenue Service - didn’t do so on a timely basis. In fact, a group of House Democrats alleged the SSA was asked to send the details a full two weeks before President Joe Biden signed the hefty COVID-19 relief package into law earlier this month.
The large group was missed in the initial round of payments because they don’t normally file a tax return.
"After receiving data from the Social Security Administration on Thursday, March 25, the IRS began the multi-step process to review, validate, and test tens of millions of records to ensure eligibility and proper calculation of Economic Impact Payments," a news release said on Tuesday. "If no additional issues arise, the IRS currently expects to complete that work and to begin processing these payment files at the end of this week."
Eligible Americans expecting the payments will begin to see updated information in the IRS’ online "Get My Payment" tool while they're processed, possibly as soon as this weekend.
The "inexplicable" SSA hiccup was made public last week by a group of House Democrats in an attempt to apply pressure and expedite a fix.
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