Direct deposits from the US$1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief legislation signed into law on Thursday by US President Joe Biden are to be made into people’s bank accounts as early as this weekend, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said.
With the signing of the stimulus bill, Biden commemorated the one-year anniversary of a US lockdown to counter the pandemic with a measure designed to bring relief to Americans and boost the economy.
“People can expect to start seeing direct deposits hit their bank accounts as early as this weekend,” Psaki said. “This is, of course, just the first wave.”
Payments to eligible Americans are to continue throughout the course of the next several weeks, she said.
The relief package is to provide US$400 billion in direct payments of US$1,400 per person, helping individuals earning less than US$80,000 annually and couples making less than US$160,000.
Nearly 160 million households are expected to get payments, White House estimates showed.
The bill includes an expanded child tax credit of up to US$3,000 per child, or US$3,600 for each child under the age of six.
The US Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is to pay part of that in monthly installments of US$250 or US$300 from July through December, adding a benefits distributor role to the revenue collection agency’s responsibilities.
Making one-off payments to those who regularly file tax returns should not be a struggle for the IRS, tax experts said.
White House communications director Kate Bedingfield said on CNN that the administration would avoid fraud in COVID-19 relief funds by exercising “extreme vigilance.”
“This is something, again, that President Biden has a lot of experience with, having overseen the implementation of the recovery act with less than 1 percent of waste, fraud and abuse,” Bedingfield said.
“It requires attention to detail, which is something that the president is extremely focused on,” she said.
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