When will the $3,600 child tax credit payments start arriving — and how often?

The IRS is moving quickly to send out the third stimulus checks in order to bring financial relief to eligible families. Eventually, this will include Social Security beneficiaries, who might get their stimulus check with the next round of payments — either mailed as paper checks or EIP debit cards. (Track your payment here.) In addition to the $1,400 payments, families will receive even more money this year — families with kids 17 and younger could qualify for the 2021 child tax credit, or CTC.

Under the expansion of the CTC, eligible parents can claim up to $3,600 for each child dependent, per the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill. That’s a significant increase of up to $1,600 over the $2,000 parents could claim last year for each dependent aged 17 or younger on their 2020 tax returns. 

But with the IRS processing millions of stimulus checks alongside hundreds of millions of tax returns between now and the new May 17 Tax Day deadline, where does that leave the child tax credit timeline? When would the first CTC payment arrive and how often would you get them? Could they become permanent? We’ll explain that and more below. Meanwhile, here’s seven tax credits for 2021, more information about unemployment benefits and what we know so far about whether a fourth stimulus check could happen. This story was recently updated.

2021 child tax credit: When will the payments start going out?

We know a general timeline, but the specifics are yet to be pinned down. The American Rescue Plan stipulates that the CTC payments will start to arrive in July. A specific date hasn’t been released, however, for when the payments will come. The IRS will make additional information about the expanded child tax credit available “as soon as possible,” the agency said in a statement March 12. 

How often will the CTC payments be distributed to families? 

The child tax credit will be paid out “periodically,” according to the text of the stimulus bill, from July through December. The IRS hasn’t shared how often it will be able to get the checks out, however.

Monthly delivery has been a goal, and the initial language used in earlier drafts of the stimulus bill. However, the language changed to “periodically,” perhaps in part because of the extra burden placed on the IRS to also distribute tax returns and stimulus checks. In other words, some may have felt a monthly delivery cycle was too ambitious or unrealistic. 

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Your tax questions answered in 3 minutes

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“I think it might be a challenge to get into the monthly right out of the box,” IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig said when asked about the timeline.

The amount you’d receive would be half of what you’re owed for the year, under the new stimulus bill, and you’ll receive the other half of the payment with your 2021 tax refund.

If paid out monthly, the payments would break down to up to $300 per month for each qualifying child age 5 and under,…