Another 2.3 million stimulus payments from the passage of the American Rescue Plan COVID relief bill in March went out in the past two weeks. They include more than 1 million "plus-up" payments, the IRS said Wednesday.
Approximately 169 million stimulus payments worth more than $395 billion have now been distributed, according to the IRS, and more could still go out in the coming weeks now that the tax filing deadline of May 17 has come and gone.
Americans who made up to $75,000 in 2020 are getting the maximum $1,400 check under the American Rescue Plan. Couples who file taxes jointly and made up to $150,000 will get $2,800. The amount received decreases to zero for individuals who made up to $80,000 and couples who earned $160,000. There's a $1,400 kicker for each dependent in the household.
The 2.3 million payments announced Wednesday mark the most recent batches of checks to go out since the bill was signed by President Joe Biden on March 11. The IRS said these batches included more than 900,000 payments for those people whom the agency did not previously have information on in order to deliver the money.
There are also more than 1.1 million "plus-up" payments worth more than $2.5 billion in these recent batches, the IRS said. As of now, the IRS says it has disbursed 8 million "plus-up" payments.
Can I get more money from a plus-up payment?
These recipients may not initially have been eligible to receive the stimulus checks based on their 2019 tax returns because they made too much income. But they are eligible now because they lost income in 2020. Now that they filed their 2020 returns to report this income loss, or if they added a dependent, they are now eligible.
About 1.2 million payments were deposited directly into bank accounts in the past two weeks. The rest went out by mail as paper checks.