The keys to stimulus checks in the United States: Who will cash them? When and how much?

A customer leaving a restaurant in Richardson, Texas, in an October image.LM Otero / AP

The second major US economic stimulus package for the coronavirus crisis was released this Sunday night, with the signing of the bill by President Donald Trump, after weeks of tough negotiations between Republicans and Democrats.

The plan, worth 900,000 million dollars, includes as a star measure a new round of direct checks to the pocket of citizens.

The final amount of the payments may change as the contest continues in Congress, but the Treasury has already launched the payment process.

These are the keys:

How much will the aid finally be, $ 600 or $ 2,000?

What is approved and signed into law, black on white, by Donald Trump are individual grants of $ 600 that the Treasury Department will try to start delivering as soon as possible.

Still, Democrats and Republicans are fighting a fight in Congress to try to raise it to $ 2,000, which is something President Trump has also called for.

The House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, has given the green light to the proposal (with the support of 44 Republican congressmen), but it is still pending a vote in a Senate controlled by Republicans, who have so far rejected it.

The measure will increase the cost of the rescue by about $ 370 billion.

Who has the right to cash those direct checks?

Everyone with annual incomes of up to $ 75,000 (with data from fiscal year 2019) will receive the total, now $ 600, and the same amount for each of their dependent children.

Thus, a household consisting of a couple and two children, for example, would charge $ 2,400.

The amount will decrease for those who pocket more than 75,000 dollars (in 5 dollars for every 100 more) until disappearing above 99,000.

Even so, a person who files their taxes as the head of a household with an income of up to $ 112,000 will collect twice the 600, plus the same amount per child.

And couples who win together up to 150,000 (or whoever lost their spouse to death in 2020).

Who in 2019 won above these thresholds but this 2020 no longer, will be able to claim it in their next income statement.

There is a relevant novelty regarding the first rescue plan: citizens married to people without a social security number also have access, which favors those citizens whose spouses are immigrants without papers.

When will the money start to arrive?

The Department of the Treasury, which is the vehicle for these payments, has already been launched and, according to Administration sources cited by

electronic deposits can begin to come out on Wednesday and Thursday.

Trump's delay in signing the bill - he did not do so until Sunday night - and all the Christmas festivities in between may delay collection.

They call it a check, but most are deposits.

In reality, the Treasury will pay most of these stimuli through direct account deposits.

This is the case with all those taxpayers who already receive their federal tax returns as deposits.

In the first round of aid, these were the first to obtain payments, those who obtained it through a paper check took longer to collect.

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