Connect with us

Economy

Many Qualifying Americans Don’t Receive Stimulus Checks, Prisoners and Deceased People Do

Published

on

cash stimulus for coronavirus

A new report by a government watchdog agency found that over a billion dollars in stimulus money allocated by the CARES Act was sent to deceased people. This news comes as stories surface about the government attempting to retract payments accidentally given to prisoners.

The Government Accountability Office found that as of April 30, nearly $1.4 billion had been sent to deceased individuals, in over a million separate payments.

According to Politico, the Internal Revenue Service was under the impression that checks should be mailed to the deceased, but quickly reversed the decision.

“The administration later reversed itself, and began trying to block payments going to the dead while asking survivors to return those that did slip through,” Politico reports. “The report does not say what prompted the agency to reverse course, when it decided to change direction or who made the decision.”

The agency was under pressure to get the payments out quickly and the “IRS counsel subsequently determined that IRS did not have the legal authority to deny payments to those who filed a return in 2019, even if they were deceased at the time of payment,” the GAO told Politico.

Prisoners also received the long-awaited ‘Trump check,’ and now the government wants them back, TIME reports. The group is not specifically excluded from receiving payments, creating a loophole for those behind bars to received old-age and survivor insurance benefit payments,” according to the report.

The IRS doesn’t have a clear indication of how much money was issued to prisoners, but according to TIME, The Kansas Department of Correction claims to have stopped over $200,000 in the checks by June, and, in Idaho in Montana, $90,000 of additional checks were obtained.

While deceased individuals and prisoners received money, many law-abiding and living Americans did not.

CNBC reported on information found by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimating 12 million people may not receive their stimulus checks. The report indicated that an estimated 159 million checks had already been sent out.

The report also named those who haven’t worked for a long period of time, low-income adults without children, and low-income families with children, as the highest at risk for not receiving the money.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Economy

White House announced $6 billion student loan forgiveness for 78,000 public service workers

Published

on

United States Congress

The White House recently announced a $6 billion loan forgiveness program. Nurses, teachers and firefighters are among the 78,000 public service workers who will qualify. Fox Business reports:

Due to fixes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, workers that never received forgiveness are now having their debts partially forgiven or canceled. Only about 7,000 public service borrowers received forgiveness prior to the Biden Administration, now that total hovers closer to 870,000, the announcement said.

“Today’s announcement comes on top of the significant progress we’ve achieved for students and student loan borrowers in the past few years,” the announcement stated. “This includes: providing the largest increases in Pell Grants in over a decade to help families who earn less than roughly $60,000 a year; fixing Income-Driven Repayment plans so borrowers in repayment for years get the relief they earned; and creating the most generous Income-Driven Repayment plan in history – the SAVE plan.”

However, there is concern over fairness that older generations are still paying off student loans and could risk losing Social Security. A group of representatives wrote a letter to Congress, hoping to address the issue of seniors still paying down student loans. Currently, under the Treasury Offset Program (TOP), the government can collect funds, such as tax refunds and Social Security, to pay outstanding student loan balances, reports Fox Business.

“Under the TOP, the federal government can withhold up to 15 percent of monthly Social Security or disability benefits for defaulted student loans,” the lawmakers explained in their letter.

Continue Reading

Trending