Written By: 

Jacqueline Hayward Spegal

Finance Officer

The IRS is addressing the delay in the American Rescue Plan’s advanced Child Tax Credit payments, which the MHA Times previously reported on in an article published September 22nd, 2021. According to the IRS, those that did not receive their expected payments, and would have otherwise qualified, will receive their payment on Friday. Many are still waiting for their payment and are waiting for another update. 

On September 24, 2021, the IRS issued a statement on IRS.gov, stating that the previously reported delayed advanced Child Tax Credit payments were currently being processed.  

“Last week, the IRS successfully delivered a third monthly round of approximately 35 million Child Tax Credits, totaling $15 billion. We have resolved a technical issue, which we estimate caused fewer than 2% of CTC recipients not to receive their September payment. These individuals will receive their payments as early as Friday by direct deposit or in the coming days for those receiving checks by mail. The impacted group primarily included taxpayers who recently made an update on their bank account or address on the IRS Child Tax Credit Update Portal and affected payments to married filing jointly taxpayers where only one spouse made a bank or address change. We know people depend on receiving these payments on time and we apologize for the delay.

There are multiple reasons why people may be seeing a different amount than they expected. If only one spouse changed an address or bank account, the other spouse’s half could be going to the old address or bank account. In these instances, the full payment will still be distributed. Monthly payment amounts can also change depending on recently processed tax returns. We encourage people to check the IRS CTC Update Portal for the latest payment information.” Said the September 24th, 2021 IRS statement published on IRS.gov. 

MHA Times did an independent survey with tax payers whose payments had been delayed. 20 out of 20 tax payers surveyed on this topic did not make a recent change in the tax portal and had not received their expected payment. While a portal change may be one cause, there must be additional unknown causes which have not been identified; as many of those effected did not make a recent change. 

MHA Times reached out to the IRS to clarify they had meant Friday September 24th, 2021 or Friday October 1st, 2021. We received the clarification directly from the IRS that the statement was referring to as early as Friday, September 24th, 2021. As of September 27th, 2021, 69% of the 52 tax payers that were surveyed on this topic and had still not received their expected Child Tax Credit payment since the September 24th, 2021 IRS statement was released. They are hoping that their payments will also be processed soon. Not everyone is waiting for payment, 31% of tax payers surveyed did receive their payment Friday as expected. 

Many families are struggling with this delay, Heidi Blankenship from Statesboro, GA was hoping to use the advanced payment to pay for her educational expenses stated “This is destructive and almost devastating for many families to not have this payment each month as anticipated.” Kendrick Deneen, out of Hunter, Texas, was planning to use the money to pay for her son’s medication. She did not receive on Friday, or as of yet, and did not make any changes in the portal. 

MHA Times reached back out to the IRS to get clarification for those that had not made portal changes and still had not received their payment. We were not able to get a response before this article was sent to publication. This story is still developing. 

You can read our previous story at https://www.mhatimes.press/2021/09/23/irs-delay-in-the-american-rescue-plans-advanced-child-tax-credit-payments-causing-further-financial-hardship-nationally/