Trump Administration Says It Could Take 20 Weeks for Some to Receive Stimulus Checks

Americans won’t likely see direct payments from the coronavirus stimulus bill until April 13, and the Trump administration says it could take 20 weeks for all the checks to be mailed. The news comes via a Democratic memo from the House Ways and Means Committee obtained by CNN.

The IRS expects to make 60 million payments likely by the week of April 13, for taxpayers whose direct deposit information was provided on their 2018 or 2019 tax returns. Paper checks should be issued the week of May 4 for those whose banking information is not on file. The memo notes that the agency will process about 5 million payments a week, which means it would take IRS up to 20 weeks to issue all the checks.

The memo points out that the IRS “envisions having an online system in place by late April or early May to allow taxpayers to update their direct deposit information and to track the status of their payments,” according to CNN.

About 150 million Americans will be eligible for payments, but the IRS only has the data of about 70 million Americans on file, meaning about 80 million will have to wait for checks to be mailed.

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On Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Americans could expect to see payments from the stimulus bill “within three weeks.”

“We expect that within three weeks, that people who have direct deposit with information with us will see those direct deposits into their bank accounts, and we will create a web-based system for people where we don’t have their direct deposit, they can upload it so that they can get the money immediately as opposed to checks in the mail,” Mnuchin said on “Face the Nation.”

Mnuchin also pushed back against the assertion that the stimulus package is a bailout for large corporations.

“We’re not bailing out any companies or any industries,” he said. “Any loans that we make, the taxpayer will be fully compensated for. As the president said, we’ll look at each one of these situations. Some of them are very good companies that just need liquidity and will get loans. Some of these companies may need more significant help and we may be taking warrants or equity as well as that.”

Alan Herrera

Alan is a writer, editor, and news junkie based in New York.