The Biden-Harris administration’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) greenlit roughly $2.4 billion in automatic stimulus payments that will be disbursed to eligible Americans by late January.
The IRS is issuing the payments to Americans who did not claim the Recovery Rebate Credit on their 2021 tax returns and did not receive the economic stimulus payments sent out during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a Dec. 20 press release. The spending announcement came with just weeks remaining in President Joe Biden’s term.
While the payment amounts vary, the maximum payment is $1,400 per individual. The IRS announced the first round of automatic stimulus checks in March 2020, which were paid out through the following month.
“These payments are an example of our commitment to go the extra mile for taxpayers,” IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel wrote in the press release. “Looking at our internal data, we realized that one million taxpayers overlooked claiming this complex credit when they were actually eligible. To minimize headaches and get this money to eligible taxpayers, we’re making these payments automatic, meaning these people will not be required to go through the extensive process of filing an amended return to receive it.”
The outbreak of COVID-19 threw a wrench in then-President Donald Trump’s economy as businesses shuttered nationwide throughout 2020. By June 2021, 6.2 million people either worked fewer hours or did not work at all due to their business closures during the pandemic, down from 49.8 million in May 2020, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. In an effort to spur economic recovery and aid Americans, the U.S. government bankrolled $931 billion in individual stimulus payment checks.
Biden also signed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan into law in March 2021, which earmarked funds for schools, businesses and individuals. The president previously blamed inflation on the high price tag associated with his government’s COVID-19 stimulus checks.
Despite several pandemic-related relief efforts also being ripe with fraud amounting to billions of dollars, the latest IRS initiative will send out an additional round of blank checks to approximately one million eligible Americans who have not yet received any payment or rebate, nearly five years after the first stimulus checks were delivered.
The IRS directed the Daily Caller News Foundation to its press release when reached for comment.
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