Press Releases

(Honolulu, HI) – Senator Brian Schatz (HI) and Congressman Ed Case (HI-01) announced today new options from the IRS for Americans eligible for direct payments under the CARES Act to speed up receipt of stimulus payments and check status.

The tools, available today, allows eligible Americans, including non-filers to register and provide electronic direct deposit information which will speed payment of their stimulus amounts up to months.

These tools, available on the irs.gov website can be accessed HERE. It was developed in partnership with the United States Treasury Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Free File Alliance.

“These improvements mean more Hawaii families will get their direct cash payments sooner,” said Senator Schatz. “While we still have more work to do, this is some good news that will help people who need this immediate relief.” 

“Congress intended for these direct cash payments to be made to most Americans as quickly and easily as possible to assist with immediate needs from the COVID-19 crisis,” said Congressman Case. “We are very concerned with the delay, and the Internal Revenue Service’s improvements go a welcome long way toward getting those payments into more American’s hands quicker and to allowing Americans to plan for when they will be received.”

The CARES Act, signed into law Friday, March 27th, included an estimated $290 billion in direct economic impact payments to eligible Americans. Maximum payments are generally $1,200 per individual or $2,400 per married couple, plus $500 per dependent child under 17 years old. The payments scale down for individuals with annual gross incomes over $75,000 and married couples with incomes over $150,000, until they phase out at over $99,000 and $198,000 respectively.

The IRS, which is responsible for the payments, originally announced that the first payments would be made by direct deposit to the bank accounts of taxpayers filing 2018 or 2019 returns who had established an electronic payment or refund record with the IRS. All other eligible recipients including Social Security and Veterans Administration beneficiaries would have to wait up to months longer for paper checks even if they also had an established electronic payment with the government.

“We were among many Members of Congress who expressed our disagreement to the IRS and succeeded in getting at least electronic Social Security recipients to get moved up,”, said Schatz and Case. “We still have unfinished business on remaining Social Security and Veterans beneficiaries, but this option by the IRS provides another avenue to try to accelerate more payments.”

Under the IRS’ actions, individuals will have three options for providing their direct deposit information to the IRS and speed up their checks:

• file 2019 tax returns and include the requested banking information on the return (for individuals required to file a federal tax return in 2019 that have not done so); 
  
  
•  file a simple tax form with a few questions, including the requested banking information (for individuals not required to file a federal tax return); or          

• provide banking information in another forthcoming online portal (for individuals who already filed a tax return in 2018 or 2019 without this information).

The next portal allows taxpayers, once authenticated, to find out the status of their economic impact payments. If no payment or check has been issued yet, they can provide their banking information for direct deposit. 

The portal is similar to the Where’s My Refund portal that is available for taxpayers to track the status of their federal tax refund. 

The U.S. Treasury Department and IRS initially estimated that there will be 171 million total rebate payments under the CARES Act, with around 70 million by direct electronic deposit and the remaining 101 million by paper check unless the IRS receives direct deposit information for these payments before a paper check is mailed.

Direct deposits began this week and will continue weekly for individuals who provide their banking information before paper checks are mailed.

According to Treasury, its current timeline is to start mailing out paper checks at the end of April.  These checks will be issued at a rate of about 5 million per week, which could take up to 20 weeks to get all the checks out. 

“Payments will be made much faster and easier to Americans who have provided banking information, so we encourage all eligible Hawai’i residents who have not already done so to use these IRS portals to provide that information as soon as possible”, said Schatz and Case. “Further information is at irs.gov and we stand ready to assist.”

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