Although many people have received the most recent round of stimulus payments, most Social Security recipients are still waiting for theirs. Much of that delay is because many Social Security recipients don’t file taxes with the IRS. That means that the IRS does not have updated information about how to send the stimulus payment to those individuals. That’s where Social Security comes in.
Social Security has extensive payment information about its recipients including bank accounts and addresses. But, Social Security is very limited by law in the information it can share with others including other government agencies like the IRS. That means that Social Security was not allowed to just send the IRS the payment information about its recipients. It had to have complicated agreements in place before it could make the payments.
Commissioner Saul said on Thursday, March 25th that “[o]nce we were free to move forward, we aggressively worked with Treasury and IRS to issue payments.” He also confirmed that the files were delivered to the IRS that same day. You can read about it in his press release here. While it appears that Social Security and Commissioner Saul were trying to do all they could, the real problem was with money. Social Security didn’t want to move forward until agreements were in place so that it could be paid for its efforts to supply IRS with the necessary information.
The IRS announced the day before Commissioner Saul’s statement that it was now working on releasing a second batch of stimulus payments. Some of the payments in the first two rounds were to Social Security beneficiaries, but the IRS said it was still waiting for information from Social Security to issue payments to those who did not file taxes in 2019 or 2020. Thus, if you are a Social Security beneficiary who hasn’t received a stimulus payment and didn’t file taxes in 2019 or 2020, you have more time to wait before you will receive your stimulus payment. The IRS has promised to share more information as soon as it becomes available.
If you want to check the status of your stimulus payment you can use the Get My Payment tool on IRS.gov.
All in all it looks like the Social Security Administration and the IRS are now working together and stimulus payments should be coming at some point for Social Security beneficiaries.