The IRS issued its second child tax credit payment on Aug 13th this month to millions of American families as advance payments of their Tax returns which they will file in 2022.
The first Child credits payment was received on July 15th this year, which helped the eligible US citizens to receive monthly checks to support their households. The IRS has estimated that the number of qualifying families for child tax credit payments may increase from 36 million.
These monthly advance payment checks act as a part of the American Rescue Plan, legislated by President Joe Biden in March this year. The legislation raised the Child Tax Credit amount from $3000 to $36,000 per child under 6 years of age and increased the age limitation for qualifying children to 19 y/o from 17.
In addition, for 2020, the credit was reduced for single parents having incomes of more than $200,000 and couples with income of more than $400,000, the thresholds were $100,000 for couples and $75,000 for single parents.
If you haven’t received your child tax credit payments, here’s how you can check the status if you qualify for it.
How to check the status of child tax credit payments online?
Generally, the Child Tax Credit monthly payments should be expected to be received on the 15th of every month, except for August, which was scheduled on the 13th. As the IRS suggested, you can visit the Child Tax Credit Updates Online Portal to view your credit history and the date when you will receive the next payment. Possibly you can view the payments that are pending and you haven’t received yet.
For this, you may look at the payment processing section at the portal, it may have additional information about the delay in payments. If it shows that the payments are delivered but you haven’t received them in your bank, watch for your address and bank account details, especially if you have changed your bank account or moved to another place.
Furthermore, for online information about your payments, you need to register/log in along with your ID.me account credentials or IRS username. In case, if you are registering or using the portal for the first time, you would need to attach your photo ID. Your photo ID will protect your account and help the IRS to prevent identity theft. It is still unclear to some extent that the portal will show other financial information such as banking details, payment processing dates, account information, or the reason behind the delay in processing your payment request.
In case, if you are trying to find the information about child tax credit payment at your bank statement, watch for the transaction labeled ‘CHILDCTC’. In this way, you can narrow down your search and find out exactly when you have received your CTC payments. If you couldn’t find anything, certainly, your bank has not received any CTC payments. Sometimes it happens when the information on the portal differs from the actual ones. Double-check the bank and other important information that the IRS has against your Tax returns, routing numbers, as well as your bank account information for instance.
What else can be the reason if you haven’t received your CTC payments?
Another reason that may hinder in receiving your first CTC amounts is that the IRS may not have received your Tax information on your file.
OR,
If you are someone that doesn’t require to file taxes, chances are there that you haven’t used the Non-Filer Portal to register online as a non-filer.
The IRS will determine the tax information of 2019-2020 or later that you may have filed and use the details to figure out how to send you child tax credit payment. If you haven’t filed taxes yet or are not registered as a non-filer, it is high time that you take some action to receive your next payments which are due on Sept 15.
You may also need to update information if:
- The birth of a child or adoption has changed your family status
- Your earnings are changed from the previous year
- Your child is now eligible to qualify for the CTC payments.
What if you don’t want to receive payments?
Child tax credit payment is an optional plan that you can withdraw from any time.
According to the IRS, families that need to unenroll themselves from receiving the advance CTC payments should apply for non-enrollment three weeks before the next payment is scheduled. Initially, the families who have unenrolled were not supposed to re-enroll themselves to receive the remaining checks, but with the new update, the IRS has allowed the families to re-enroll from September and get the rest of their checks.
For more information, here’s how you can opt out for future child tax credit payments. Also, here’s how you can track down your child tax credit payment if you haven’t received it yet.
