IRS likely challenged in sending recovery payments out on time

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The Internal Revenue Service faces a challenge in meeting Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's three-week goal for sending out the recovery payments included in the $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed Friday.

"Our expectation is within three weeks, we will have direct payments out where we have depository information," Mnuchin said while briefing the press Wednesday evening.

That task could be easier said than done, according to Janet Holzblatt, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center who was a former deputy director of the Individual Taxation Division in the U.S. Treasury Office of Tax Analysis.

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In her role at Treasury, Holzblatt worked with the IRS in 2001 and 2003 to send stimulus/rebate checks to taxpayers to help boost the economy. She said that, in both cases, the IRS started preparing for the payments months before their respective bills were enacted.

In 2001, the IRS began work on the payments in March, and that the bill was enacted in June of that year. It took six weeks after enactment for checks to be sent to recipients.

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