Member-only story

Why Your $1,200 Check May Be Late

Peter Ramirez
2 min readApr 16, 2020

--

Illustration by Peter Grabowski

In a stunning move this week, the Treasury Department ordered President Trump’s name appear on all stimulus checks being sent out to Americans in the coming weeks.

First reported by The Washington Post and later confirmed by other outlets, the last minute change may delay the the first round of checks by a few days according to two IRS officials.

The technology team in charge of implementing the policy wasn’t notified of the decision until recently, only increasing the odds of a delay in the issuance of the checks.

“Any last-minute request like this will create a downstream snarl that will result in a delay,” said Chad Hooper, a quality control manager and national president of the IRS’ Professional Managers Association.

About five million checks were to be issued weekly, starting with the lowest-income taxpayers. A delay of at least a few days would therefore impact those in the lowest tax brackets.

A president’t name has never appeared on an IRS check before. Given that President Trump lacks the authority to sign the checks himself, his name will instead appear on the memo line of the check.

Although he couldn’t sign the checks himself, he did try. Three officials told The Washington Post that Trump had approached Treasury Secretary Mnuchin to see if a copy…

--

--

Peter Ramirez
Peter Ramirez

Written by Peter Ramirez

political science researcher. former valedictorian. reader/writer. host of “Politics Mostly” podcast.

No responses yet