As of last week, more than 150 million people have gotten their stimulus check, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
However, not everyone eligible for the check has received the money yet. The IRS admitted that they were in a hurry to distribute the stimulus payments since millions of people filed for unemployment when the pandemic began.
The agency started giving the money to those that they could reach the fastest. That meant that those who had already filed their 2019 or 2018 tax returns and received a refund that was directly deposited in their current bank account were the once to first receive the money.
Although millions have already received the payments, there are those who are still waiting. Here are the things that you can do if you still have not received the stimulus check.
Check the mail
Most of the payments were either deposited in the bank account of the individual or it was sent as a paper check in the mail. However, the agency stated that not everyone will get the money through their accounts or checks, there are 4 million Americans who will receive prepaid debit cards instead.The Visa debit card will come in a plain envelope from "Money Network Cardholder Services."
File your tax return
If you need to file your tax return, you need to do it immediately so that your stimulus money can be processed. Millions of low-income Americans are not required to file tax returns, due to their income bracket.
However, they are still required to submit some information to the IRS online before they can get their payment. Americans who did not earn more than $12,200 in 2019 or married couple who did not earn more than $24,400 last year are the people who are labeled by the agency as "low-income."
The agency has created a special non-filer tool on their online website and it will only ask the user for basic information such as their name, their date of birth and their Social Security Number. The user does not need to indicate their income.
Wait for the process
Since the pandemic began, numerous IRS employees were asked to work from home. This change means that the agency has stopped opening the mail that were sent to them. In April, the IRS had to move most of the unopened mail into trailers.
It is possible that those who filed a paper return are still waiting for their stimulus checks and their tax refund, and it may take a while since the agency sent most of its employees to work from home. This delay also affects audits and documentation requests that had been submitted by mail.
Try to get a PIN
According to IRS, they will send pin in the mail to those who were victims of identity theft. It is their added protection for a person to use especially if a person files for tax returns.
However, there are a lot of people who may have misplaced the PIN or they never received one and they need to retrieve it online. It can be tricky to get another PIN. In order to confirm the identity of a person, the online retrieval process will ask for personal information like a credit card number or load account number, debit cards don't count.
Those who don't have the following will need to file a paper return and will need to wait for the IRS to reopen before the taxes and the stimulus payments will be processed.
