It has now been more than three months since, the first batch of the third round of stimulus checks was sent out. Now, payments continue – as do supplemental “plus-up” payments, which are updates to insufficient earlier payments. All Americans should be in one of four categories – those who do not qualify for payments (exceeding the $75,000 per year income cap), those who received their payments already, those who qualify for a “plus-up” payment, and those who have not yet received their check.

By now, more than 160 million checks, nearly 90 percent of the total, have been sent out. The total value of the distributed checks has been almost $400 billion, still short of the $450 billion set aside for the program. But nine out of ten qualifying stimulus check recipients have already received their checks; if you still have not received yours, this is a possible indication that something has gone wrong with your payment.

This can be simply addressed via the IRS’s website: the agency helpfully includes a “Get My Payment” tool and offers instructions about requesting a payment trace if necessary. However, it is possible that nothing is wrong, and the agency is simply taking an exceptionally long time to process your stimulus check. A person’s 2020 taxes and eligibility issues, as well as mail delays and bad luck concerning the IRS’s massive paper backlog, means that some people will fall through the cracks.

So, if you receive nothing, it can be helpful to go to the “Get My Payment” page and follow the steps provided to ascertain your check’s status. (It is also possible, albeit harder, to track the stimulus check through the USPS.)

If the program tells you that you are not qualified for a check, this means that you exceeded the $75,000 limit. Unfortunately, with the run-up to the first of the Child Tax Credit checks being sent out in mid-July, concerns have boomed over the relationship between eligibility requirements for the stimulus check and the childcare payments. The two qualifications are remarkably similar; each payment is paid in full until they reach $75,000 per year. At this point, the two payments continue to taper off, but at different rates; a person making $80,000 a year would not receive any stimulus payments, but could still receive a Child Tax Credit of a lesser amount.

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.

Image: Reuters