Still haven’t received your stimulus check? This might be why.

Still haven't received your stimuls check? This might be why.

The majority of stimulus payments were supposed to have been issued by this past Wednesday, May 13th. However, there are still a substantial amount of Americans who have yet to receive their economic impact payments. While many have very complicated situations that may affect their payments, we’ll try to provide as much information as we can with publicly available information.

We’ve received a number of comments from our readers who are Supplemental Security Income representative payees and are concerned about the status of their payments. According to the Social Security Administration’s website, if you filed a 2018 or 2019 tax return the payment should have been sent to the bank account provided on your tax return for an electronic tax refund, or mailed to the address provided on your tax return. However, if a 2018 or 2019 tax return was not required, the payee should receive the payment in late May either to their bank account by direct deposit or the Direct Express card depending on how the SSI payment is normally received. More information for SSI recipients and payees can also be found here.

For everyone else who hasn’t received their stimulus payment yet, it could be just a matter of waiting. The deadline to provide your direct deposit information to the IRS has passed if they didn’t already have it on file. If you used a tax preparing service for your last tax return, your payment may have been sent to a temporary bank account set up by your tax preparer. If that is the case, the payment will be sent back to the government who will issue you a paper check.

If your plan was to get a paper check all along, they are still in the process of being issued. Your annual income for 2018 or 2019 will determine how long you’ll be waiting for your check. Lower-income taxpayers will receive their paper checks first.

Lastly, if you filed a paper tax return for 2019, your payment may be delayed as paper returns have been put on hold by the IRS.

Unfortunately, we can’t answer why payment has been delayed for every situation, but we hope this post answers the questions that some of our readers have had.