If Your Stimulus Check Was Less Than Expected, This IRS Glitch Might Be to Blame

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As a third round of stimulus checks is dispersed, some frustrated couples have only received half of their payment.

This is due to a glitch with the Internal Revenue Service's system, in which payments are divided into two installments for married couples when one has filed an injured spousal claim, according to CNN.

The glitch has resulted in many husbands and wives taking to the Facebook group "Half Stimulus Missing/Received Status" to air their grievances and look for answers.

Form 8379, also known as an injured spousal claim, is for couples filing jointly when one owes federal back taxes, child support or has defaulted on a federal student loan. When the IRS grants the claim, they won't offset the couple's refund to pay those debts.

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Couples in this situation are still eligible for their full $1,400 per-person stimulus payment, as the IRS told CNN, but the second installment may come within weeks of the first. They can check the statuses of their payments separately with the IRS' online Get My Payment tool.

Most couples can expect to receive their second installment in the same manner as their first, depending on if they included direct deposit information with their 2019 or 2020 tax returns. If no bank account information was provided, the payments will be mailed in the form of a paper check or a debit card. In some cases, one payment may come as direct deposit, and the other by mail.

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The IRS, along with the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, previously announced in a statement that a third round of the latest stimulus checks are expected to go out Wednesday.

"For taxpayers receiving direct deposit, this batch of payments began processing on Friday and will have an official pay date of Wednesday, March 24, with some people seeing these in their accounts earlier, potentially as provisional or pending deposits," the release said.

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"Today marks the second batch of payments, with additional payments anticipated on a weekly basis going forward," they said, after the first batch of payments began going out last week. "The vast majority of taxpayers receiving EIPs will receive it by direct deposit."

The latest series of payments comes after President Joe Biden signed a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill earlier this month.