IRS Statement – Advance Child Tax Credit Payments

September 24, 2021

Last week, the IRS successfully delivered a third monthly round of approximately 35 million Child Tax Credits, totaling $15 billion. We have resolved a technical issue, which we estimate caused fewer than 2% of CTC recipients not to receive their September payment. These individuals will receive their payments as early as Friday by direct deposit or in the coming days for those receiving checks by mail. The impacted group primarily included taxpayers who recently made an update on their bank account or address on the IRS Child Tax Credit Update Portal and affected payments to married filing jointly taxpayers where only one spouse made a bank or address change. We know people depend on receiving these payments on time and we apologize for the delay.

There are multiple reasons why people may be seeing a different amount than they expected. If only one spouse changed an address or bank account, the other spouse's half could be going to the old address or bank account. In these instances, the full payment will still be distributed. Monthly payment amounts can also change depending on recently processed tax returns. We encourage people to check the IRS CTC Update Portal for the latest payment information.