After some confusion where the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) indicated that Social Security beneficiaries would need to file a tax return to receive a stimulus payment, the Department of Treasury announced, April 1, 2020, that would notff necessarily be the case. Below is information from Social Security regarding the confusion.
The Department of the Treasury (Treasury) announced on April 1 that Social Security beneficiaries who are not typically required to file tax returns will not need to file an abbreviated tax return to receive an economic impact payment. The IRS will use the information on the Form SSA-1099 to generate $1,200 economic impact payments to Social Security beneficiaries who did not file tax returns in 2018 or 2019.
Treasury, not Social Security, will make automatic payments to Social Security beneficiaries. Beneficiaries will receive these payments by direct deposit or by paper check, just as they would normally receive their Social Security benefits.
Stimulus Payments Will Not Impact SSI Benefits
Social Security also recently announced that economic stimulus payments would not impact Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits. The SSI program is a needs-based benefits program for low income seniors and disabled individuals. Because it is a needs-based program Social Security has to consider all income available to an individual in determining eligibility for payments, but the one-time stimulus benefit will not be considered income in determining monthly and future benefits for SSI recipients. The following was recently posted on Social Security’s website.
Note for Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Recipients:
We are working closely with Treasury to address outstanding questions about our SSI recipients in an attempt to make the issuance of economic impact payments as quick and efficient as possible. We realize people are concerned, and the IRS will provide additional information at Coronavirus Tax Relief when available. Please note that we will not consider economic impact payments as income for SSI recipients, and the payments are excluded from resources for 12 months.
We will continue to update this page as further details become available.
