29,000 stimulus checks totaling $45 million issued

The Department of Finance has already issued approximately 29,000 economic impact payments—more popularly known as “stimulus checks”—totaling around $45 million.

Finance’s Division of Revenue & Taxation is now working on issuing batches of payments every Friday, to provide taxpayers ample time to submit their returns. Notices are being prepared and sent out to taxpayers that received a payment.

“What I encourage the taxpayers to do is to keep that notice, so that when they file their 2020 return, they’ll be able to have a reconciliation with that notice to claim additional credits should they be entitled to more,” said Revenue & Taxation director Tracy Norita.

According to Norita, adjustments to payment can be made. “If you received less than you are entitled to, don’t worry. You did not lose the money. You can still claim the credit in your 2020 return.”

Those who have yet to receive their checks are asked to be patient, as there might be errors on their returns that could be holding their checks back. “For those that are still pending, we are issuing payments as fast as we can. Meaning, those that have passed our processing without any errors, those checks got released immediately,” she added. “So, if they haven’t received it yet, there may be a possibility that there is an error on the return that’s holding their check back. What we have done is taken those errors out, and we are contacting taxpayers for the information that we need to release that information in our system, so that we can release the payment.”

While Revenue & Taxation has yet to max out the $47.1 million allotted for the payments, considering those that are still pending processing due to errors, Norita said it is looking like they would have to request for additional funding.

“That is the discussion that we will be having with the [Internal Revenue Servuce] soon. As far as clearing those pending payments, we are hoping to do that within the next couple of weeks,” she added.

Those who have questions can contact Rev & Tax via email at stimulus@dlf.gov.mp, or by calling 664-1067, 664-1000, or 664-1019.

“We are trying our best to respond to these inquiries, we have the Division of Customs helping us answering phone calls to help alleviate the inquiries and so we are trying our best, and we just continue to ask for everyone’s patience,” she added.