Can you change your tax return to get a stimulus check? Here’s what experts say
People who haven’t received their economic relief payments are checking the Internal Revenue Service’s website for status updates.
But some are getting unexpected news.
“Payment status unavailable,” the Get My Payment tool reads.
The message could mean a few things. Chief among them: You may not be eligible for a stimulus check. According to the IRS, that includes people who earn too much, are claimed as a dependent on someone else’s tax return, don’t have a valid social security number or are not living in the U.S. legally.
There’s no way to undo earning more than $100,000 last year.
But parents can decide whether to claim their adult children — a child under the age of 19 or a child under 24 who is still a student, according to the IRS — as dependents. It sometimes can “make a big difference in what you pay in taxes” and what your refund could be, TurboTax says.
Sometimes it makes no difference at all.
Some parents previously let their adult child file as an independent but decided to claim them again in 2019. There’s also adult children who mistakenly ticked the “could be a dependent” box when filling out their tax returns this year without realizing their parents hadn’t claimed them.
Those parents and their adult children won’t get any money from the government since only dependents under the age of 17 are eligible for the extra $500 stimulus payment, according to the IRS.
“Is there anything I can do to remedy this situation?” one parent asked MarketWatch.
Quentin Fottrell, a personal-finance editor and advice columnist at the financial news site, suggested amending your tax return with a Form 1040X.
“Enter the new — that is, correct — information and also explain your reasons for changing the filing,” he said. “It seems unlikely that your check will arrive in this first round, given the backlog of work tax authorities are facing due to the pandemic and stimulus bill.”
But don’t try to file another original return, Bill Bischoff, a tax expert at Marketwatch, told Fottrell.
“That will just confuse the IRS and cause headaches for you,” he said.
The IRS has recommended something similar before.
In 2008 — when the government handed out economic relief payments during the Great Recession — they provided an instructional sheet suggesting taxpayers who, for example, didn’t realize their earned and qualifying income met the eligibility threshold, file a Form 1040X with an explanation of changes to get the payment.
There could, however, be a catch this time.
A 1040X cannot be filed electronically, according to TurboTax, and the IRS announced April 9 that it can’t process paper returns during the coronavirus pandemic.
“That means if you have to amend your taxes for 2018 or 2019 in order to get your full payment, you might just have to sit tight for now,” LAist reported.
This story was originally published April 16, 2020 at 4:08 PM with the headline "Can you change your tax return to get a stimulus check? Here’s what experts say."
