California will begin sending 1,150,000 pandemic stimulus payments this week to qualifying residents, the Franchise Tax Board said Friday, Oct. 22.
The Golden State Stimulus II payments began in late August and are drawn from federal funds and the state’s $75.7 billion budget surplus.
Nearly two-thirds of Californians are eligible for a stimulus check of $600 under two different Golden State Stimulus programs.
Golden State Stimulus I is distributing payments of $600-$1,200 to low-income residents who claim the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit. Those residents typically earn less than $30,000 annually. The extra $600 is for qualifying children or family dependents.
In the GSSII program, qualifying residents who earn less than $75,000 in adjusted gross income will get $600 and an additional $500 for dependents.
We asked Andrew LePage at the Franchise Tax Board to give us an update on the program.
How many GSSII payments are going out? The next scheduled batch will comprise roughly 1.15 million GSS II payments – about 400,000 direct deposits and about 750,000 mailed checks.
How many GSS II payments have been sent, to date? So far, the state has issued about 4.5 million GSS II payments – about 3.3 million direct deposit payments and about 1.2 mailed checks.
How much GSS II money has been sent to CA residents so far? Those roughly 4.5 million GSS II payments issued so far total more than $3.2 billion.
When should all the payments be distributed? We hope to issue almost all of the GSS II payments by the end of the year (and most direct deposit payments by Oct. 31).
LePage also noted that recipients expecting a paper check can use their ZIP code to check the distribution schedule. (Residents who didn’t provide a direct deposit account on their tax return are getting paper checks.)
Use the last three digits of your ZIP code to see when paper checks are being distributed:
–000-044: 10/06/2021 through 10/27/2021
–045-220: 10/18/2021 through 11/05/2021
–221-375: 11/1/2021 through 11/19/2021
–376-584: 11/15/2021 through 12/03/2021
–585-719: 11/29/2021 through 12/17/2021
–720-927: 12/13/2021 through 12/31/2021
–928-999: 12/27/2021 through 1/11/2022
To qualify for the payments, residents must:
- File 2020 taxes by Oct. 15, 2021;
- Have adjusted gross income of $1 to $75,000 for the 2020 tax year;
- Be a state resident for more than half of the 2020 tax year;
- Be a state resident the date payment is issued;
- Cannot be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer;
- A dependent is a qualifying child or qualifying relative.
As previously reported, excluded from the payments are those whose income is solely derived from benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and State Supplementary Payment (SSP) and the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), Social Security, CalWorks, unemployment, state disability insurance (SDI) and VA disability.
To get an estimate on your California stimulus payment, go to ftb.ca.gov