So… if you were one of the unfortunate Americans who lost a loved one during these trying times, and if the IRS sent a stimulus check to that deceased family member, the IRS is asking you to send them that money back.
In fact, the IRS says any checks issued to dead people should be sent back or repaid. Here’s exactly what the agency says:
A Payment made to someone who died before receipt of the Payment should be returned to the IRS by following the instructions in the Q&A about repayments. Return the entire Payment unless the Payment was made to joint filers and one spouse had not died before receipt of the Payment, in which case, you only need to return the portion of the Payment made on account of the decedent. This amount will be $1,200 unless adjusted gross income exceeded $150,000.
The new provision stating that payments to the deceased should be returned may come as a surprise. As MONEY has previously reported, tens of thousands of similar aid payments were mistakenly sent to dead people during the Great Recession, likely due to a lag in the reporting of deaths to government agencies. Back then, there was little to no effort on the part of the IRS to get the payments to dead people back. What’s more, in recent weeks many tax and legal experts had been under the impression that 2020 payments sent to dead people would probably not have to be returned.
Now the IRS is saying otherwise. Even so, it remains unclear what will happen if an ineligible payment is not returned to the IRS.
