IRS stimulus check status: With glitches addressed, try the payment portal before this deadline

It’s time to update your IRS bank information ASAP, if you haven’t yet.

The IRS says that “if you enter your bank information in Get My Payment any day until noon on Tuesday, your payment date will be available beginning the following Saturday in Get My Payment.” That means those who miss the Tuesday noon deadline will need to wait until the next Saturday, up to 12 days later, to get the same information.

This new information is part of an extensive Sunday update to the IRS Get My Payment Frequently Asked Questions page.

If you have previously been unable to enter your bank information or receive payment status through the Get My Payment portal, try again. The IRS says that it updated the portal this weekend, fixing glitches that had blocked tens of millions of Americans from providing direct deposit information.

Though the Get My Payment portal opened April 15, numerous users (including this reporter) were unable to enter direct deposit information, and/or received a “Payment status not available” message. This glitch likely affected the 21 million people who used professional tax filing services, as well as many others, including people who had not filed 2018 or 2019 tax returns (or whose returns were still unprocessed by the IRS), people who do not owe taxes and did not receive refunds, and people with closed bank accounts, among others, reported The Washington Post. 

The IRS now says that many of these issues have been resolved.

The Get My Payment portal is updated every 24 hours, overnight, “so there is no need to check more often,” says the IRS. As of Friday, the Treasury Department said that it had released stimulus payments to 88.1 million Americans, just over half of those expected to receive them. Checks by mail are expected to take as long as five months to deliver.

Another deadline: People who receive Supplemental Security Income or Veterans Affairs benefits have until May 5 to log on to the IRS Non-Filer Portal to sign up for $500 payments per dependent child. All others do not need to do this.