If you want your $1,200 federal government stimulus payment deposited directly into your checking account, noon Wednesday is the deadline to provide that information to the Internal Revenue Service.
More than 100 million payments have been sent out from the federal government, but millions more are yet to be delivered. Some of those payments are being mailed to those eligible to receive one, others are having the payments directly deposited into their checking or savings accounts.
If you want the payment deposited directly into your bank account and have not filed tax returns in the past two years, or have filed returns but had refund checks mailed to you, the IRS may not have your bank account information.
You can check with the IRS to make sure they have the direct deposit information. If the agency doesn’t have the information, you have until Wednesday at noon to provide it to them.
If you choose not to set up the direct deposit, or cannot get into the IRS system to do so, your payment will be sent to you via the U.S. mail.
Here is what you need to do to set up direct deposit with the IRS:
- Go to the Get My Payment page.
- Find the blue “Get My Payment” button and click on it.
- You will be sent to a page with the heading “THIS U.S. GOVERNMENT SYSTEM IS FOR AUTHORIZED USE ONLY!” Click the blue “OK” button.
- The page you are sent to will have a heading that says “Get My Payment.” You will be asked for your Social Security number, date of birth, street address and ZIP Code. Fill those in and click on the blue “CONTINUE” button.
If the IRS already has your direct deposit information from a previous tax return or from Social Security or pension payments, you will land on a page that gives you the status of your payment.
If the IRS does not have that information, you will be sent to a page that allows you to enter your bank routing number and account number. This will allow the IRS to directly deposit the money into your account.
What could go wrong?
Some people have reported getting an error message such as “status unknown.” Try the process again if you get that message.
You can also try these workarounds if you continue to be blocked out:
- Type your address in all capital letters.
- Try a different browser. Some people say Google Chrome doesn’t work as well with the site as other browsers do.
- Check to make sure your information is entered correctly.
