The IRS will allow nonfiling federal beneficiaries with dependents to register online for their long-delayed $500-per-child economic impact payments (EIPs).
Eligible taxpayers can use the IRS’s online nonfiler portal until 3 p.m. November 21 to register their dependents for the stimulus payments, the agency said in an October 23 statement.
Christine Speidel of Villanova University Charles Widger School of Law welcomed the IRS’s latest announcement. She said a status conference with the IRS on McGruder v. Mnuchin, No. 2:20-cv-03590 (E.D. Pa. 2020) — a case challenging the IRS’s administration of EIPs in which she is co-counsel — was continued October 22 so the agency could clarify the issues around dependents’ rights to the supplemental payments.
Eligible individuals now include those with qualifying children who receive Social Security retirement, survivor, or disability benefits; recipients of Supplemental Security Income, Railroad Retirement Board benefits, or Veterans Affairs compensation and pension benefits; and those who didn’t file a tax return in 2018 or 2019.
Nina E. Olson, executive director of the Center for Taxpayer Rights, said the IRS seems to have trouble deciding on a consistent deadline for all eligible EIP taxpayers.
The IRS announced October 5 that it was moving its nonfiler EIP online registration deadline from October 15 to November 21, Speidel noted. However, it also included language on the portal specifying that taxpayers who had already received an EIP couldn’t register for another, she said.
“Recall [the IRS] originally said in the McGruder case that people had until October 1 to register,” said Olson, a former national taxpayer advocate. “We all pushed back — why are you giving regular taxpayers until October 15 and these vulnerable taxpayers a shorter window?”
The IRS eventually extended the deadline to October 31 for 9 million nonfilers if they used paper, but to November 21 if they used the portal or e-filed, she said.
“I really have no idea, other than [computer] programming, why the IRS or Treasury is splitting all the deadlines,” Olson said. “I don’t understand why there are all these different dates, except maybe the IRS is hoping to have work come in in different tranches.”
When it moved the portal deadline to November 21, the IRS said that any further extension would interfere with its preparations for the 2021 filing season.
“It is unfortunate that they did not originally allocate those resources last spring. Now the agencies are responding to congressional pressure and attempting to carry out congressional intent to get [EIPs] out as soon as possible,” Speidel said.
At the same time, “the IRS and Treasury deserve credit for deciding to allocate resources to getting this done,” Speidel added.