The Louisiana Department of Revenue says it has distributed 69,000 payments of $250 each to coronavirus pandemic front line workers so far, good for $17 million distributed from the $50 million fund for the program.
Louisiana Revenue Secretary Kimberly Robinson says since the application period opened July 15, they’ve received some interesting data on just who has been applying for the credits.
“The largest category has been those persons who work in the grocery and convenience store business, which is about 23 percent. Our smallest category has been the public health epidemiologists, and that includes those persons who work in the medical laboratories and do the testing,” says Robinson.
Home health and healthcare workers are the second biggest category after grocery store workers. Starting this week, the Louisiana Department of Revenue will be mailing thousands of letters to people who applied for credits but had a problem with their application, or submitted disqualifying information.
“For example they have answered and told us no that they did not work the 200 hours during the requisite period from March to May, but they filled in all of the rest of the information,” says Robinson.
208 applications have been filed on behalf of frontline workers who are ineligible because they were deceased. They have also had some problems verifying workers’ information.
“Either they have started typing in an employer’s name and did not complete it, misspelled an employer’s name and we just can’t figure it out, or they put their own name again for the employers name,” says Robinson.