How to Chase Down a Missing Stimulus Check

After a pandemic that caused a devastating loss of life and took a huge economic toll in its first year, sending around $3,200 in Economic Impact Payment per person is nowhere near good enough. Still, it's a good chunk of change—and with almost 10 million people in the U.S. unemployed as of this month, anyone who hasn’t received all the COVID cash they’re owed needs access to it as soon as possible. It’s also critical to note that this stimulus money is available to U.S. citizens who often get left on the policy sidelines: people experiencing homelessness and people who are currently incarcerated. That’s all the more reason that not receiving EIP money is such a big problem.

It doesn’t help that when and how these stimulus payments are sent out feels fairly opaque, and extremely varied from person to person. For instance, my $1,200 stimulus payment came in the form of a physical check in late May 2020, while most people I know received it via direct deposit in April. Meanwhile, I didn’t receive the $600 stimulus payment from January 2020 at all (unclear why, but I’m still chasing it down), and I received the $1,400 stimulus payment as a direct deposit yesterday, a few weeks after most of the people I know got theirs when the rollout began in mid-March. 

If you’re pissed and confused because one or more stimulus checks got “lost” in the mail, or because a direct deposit just… wasn’t directly deposited, there are things you can do. After you double-check whether you’re eligible (single people needed to be making less than $75,000 a year in 2019 to get the $600 check and the $1,400 check, and couples filing taxes together need to be making less than $150,000), there are a few different steps you can take to claim the money, plus plenty of free tools and guides to doing so online.

The solution to claiming the first two rounds of stimulus money is as “easy” as filing your taxes, a sentence I write with a heavy heart. The IRS has made payments one and two claimable as a Recovery Rebate Credit that filers can opt into when they do their 2020 taxes electronically—a service that’s free on the IRS website for anyone making less than $72,000 a year. 

The Get It Back campaign, aimed at helping workers claim tax credits and file their taxes for free, has a great walk-through (pictures included, thank God) on how exactly to click into that rebate claim. Basically, just check the box for whichever check you didn’t get, and you’ll receive the rebate lumped in with your tax return. One thing to remember: last week, the IRS extended tax day for individuals until May 17, 2021, rather than the usual April 15 deadline. That’s especially good news, because if you filed for the rebate and then received your check, or filed already but didn’t opt into the rebate, you’re going to have to refile.

The third stimulus round can’t be claimed as a tax rebate like the first two, so the best option here is to use the IRS Get My Payment tool to track the status of your money—and whether it will come in the form of a direct deposit or a physical check. 

Unfortunately, the Get My Payment tool is a tricky little devil, so you may have to play around with your data entry in order to get an actual result. This round, the tool finally worked for me when I entered in my 2019 address (I haven’t filed my 2020 taxes yet because I love procrastinating!) in lowercase letters, but it seems worthwhile to experiment with formatting—e.g., all caps, spelling out “Apartment” or “Unit,” etc. Obviously there’s no possible way to make this any easier or more accessible—but seriously, your best bet is to enter the address from your most recently filed tax return, as it appeared on your tax return. 

For anyone who doesn’t have a fixed address or access to a bank account, getting the stimulus money might seem like a lost cause—despite the fact that unhoused people are eligible for EIPs. According to CNN, the first step is filing your taxes: unhoused people making less than $72,000 should file their taxes for free electronically in order to claim the aforementioned rebate, or seek out free, in-person assistance from the IRS to do so. 

If you don’t have a permanent address that the IRS can send a physical check or prepaid debit card to, CNN pointed to a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau report that suggested other locations that might be an option: PO boxes, shelters, or houses of worship that hold mail for congregants, a friend or a relative’s address, or a post office address for General Delivery.

It’s hard to imagine a worse place to be during the COVID pandemic than a jail or a prison—the bare minimum people who are currently incarcerated deserve is access to their stimulus money. According to the Get It Back campaign, incarcerated people didn’t qualify for the first round of EIP until September 2020, when a federal judge ruled that the IRS had to stop withholding stimulus payments from incarcerated people. 

If you’re a U.S. citizen with a valid social security number, you qualify even if you’re incarcerated—unless you’ve been claimed as a dependent on someone else’s tax return, or you made more than $99,000 (for Check #1, the $1,200 one) or $87,000 (for Check #2, the $600 one) in 2019.  Access to your stimulus cash is dependent on filing your 2020 taxes and claiming the same rebate credit mentioned above—the Get It Back campaign has more information on filing taxes from the inside here.

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