In less than two weeks, the first of six advance payments in the newly expanded Child Tax Credit will be sent out by the IRS to the homes of thirty-six million American households, containing roughly 92 percent of all American children.  

The advance payments were first laid out in the American Rescue Plan Act, the Biden administration’s first pandemic recovery bill. The ARPA, altogether worth $1.9 trillion, funded several major recovery proposals, including further unemployment insurance, funds for homeowners facing foreclosure, funds for Native American tribes, and, most prominently, the third round of stimulus payments – checks totaling $1400 to every American adult, within certain income constraints. 

The Child Tax Credit payments are being sent out much the same way—through the IRS, within the same income bracket—and have been referred to as a “fourth stimulus check” exclusively for parents. The comparison has been especially relevant as the odds of an actual fourth stimulus check have lowered. These checks, while popular, have an astronomical price tag; the March measure ultimately cost the government $450 billion. While stimulus advocates have claimed the payments helped keep Americans out of poverty, when the CEOs of several major banks testified to Congress, they claimed that many Americans had not spent their stimulus payments from the previous year, drawing their urgency into question. 

The problem with stimulus checks is that they target nearly everyone, regardless of need. The Child Tax Credit, on the other hand, is devoted towards a group—parents—which has been shown to be in greater need of economic assistance than the rest of the public. Moreover, unlike in previous years, when billionaires could claim the credit, it has been restricted to parents who together make less than $150,000 per year in income—or single parents making $75,000 or less. 

However, the IRS has based its list of recipients on families’ tax returns from 2019 and 2020. While practical—as these returns contain a family’s income, as well as information about their dependents—it means that the agency’s information is sometimes not fully up-to-date. If, for instance, you are expecting a child by the end of the year, the IRS will not know about it by default.

You can still claim the baby on your tax return in April, and receive the full credit then. (For children under the age of six, the credit is $3600; for children six and up, it is decreased to $3000.) However, if you would prefer the advance checks, you can report the birth of the child via the IRS’s online “Child Tax Credit Update Portal.”

Crucially, either way, you will receive the same total tax credit; it does not matter whether the baby was born in July or December.  The only difference lies in how soon the payments are made. 

Trevor Filseth is a current and foreign affairs writer for the National Interest.  

Image: Reuters.