PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — It’s been a week since the IRS announced it was starting to deposit the second round of stimulus payments but many people are still waiting for the money to show up.
Kimberly Davis still hadn’t received her payment by Tuesday so she went to the IRS website to track its status.
“I clicked on it and it said the first went in in April and it went into my usual Oregon State Credit Union,” Davis told KOIN 6 News. “And then it said the second payment went into an account with the last four numbers I didn’t recognize.”
Davis soon learned she wasn’t the only person to see that her $600 payment had been deposited into an account she didn’t recognize.
“So I went on, which I usually do, on the unemployment support site on Facebook and started asking people and a lot of people — like 25 people — popped up right away that were having the same problem,” she said.
The conversation continued in that Facebook group. Perplexed and frustrated, Davis decided to call H&R Block.
“I thought, well, I haven’t had H&R Block in about three years, I thought I’d check there,” she said. “Somebody mentioned that maybe it went to H&R Block and sure enough we think that it did.”
Davis believes the stimulus money went to a rapid refund account she had when she filed her taxes through H&R Block three years ago.
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“I found out people with TurboTax, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt — even if it was three years ago — if they ever had a rapid refund through those [their] stimulus money may have gone to their bank,” she said.
TurboTax and Jackson Hewitt alerted their customers via social media about the issue. Jackson Hewitt said payments were sent to 13 million bank accounts that are invalid or closed.
In a statement posted Tuesday on its website, the IRS said, “Because of the speed at which the law required the IRS to issue the second round of Economic Impact Payments, some payments may have been sent to an account that may be closed or, is or no longer active, or unfamiliar.”
Banks that mistakenly received stimulus payments are required by law to send the money back to the government. Anyone who doesn’t receive a full stimulus payment by the time they file their 2020 tax returns may claim the recovery rebate credit.