Benefits recipients have until Wednesday to claim $500 child stimulus payment

If you receive Social Security, disability, or veteran’s benefits, your time is running short to claim a $500 stimulus payment for any eligible children in your home.

The Internal Revenue Service has announced that Wednesday at 12:00 p.m. ET is the deadline for those individuals to register their children with the non-filer tool on the IRS website. People who filed tax returns in 2018 or 2019 do not need to register on the site.

The reason for the extra step is that while the government has your bank information, thanks to those benefits, it doesn’t know if you have any children eligible for the stimulus checks.

The $1,200 payments to individuals are being sent automatically, but have not yet gone out to benefits recipients. And once the payment has been issued, you won’t be able to use the non-filer tool to add kids, meaning you’d have to wait until next year to receive the cash. (Stimulus payments are formally an advance credit on 2020 tax returns.)

People who receive Railroad Retirement benefits and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will also have to make the IRS aware of eligible children.

While millions of taxpayers have already received their stimulus checks, millions more have not—and have grown frustrated with the IRS’s “Get My Payments” portal, which has posted vague messages that have frustrated and confused many users.