Virus Checks With Trump's Name Sent On Time, Treasury Says

The Internal Revenue Service has delivered roughly $158 billion in coronavirus relief payments to over 88 million Americans, and paper checks with President Donald Trump's name on them have been issued without delay, Treasury said Friday.

As of April 17, the IRS had issued 88.1 million payments to taxpayers across the nation, according to state-by-state data released by the agency. California led the U.S. in economic impact payments received by taxpayers, with 9.1 million, followed by Texas at 7.8 million. Those payments totaled roughly $15.9 billion in California and about $14.4 billion in Texas, according to the data.

More payments are being delivered each week, and Treasury and the IRS expect to issue over 150 million payments overall, the agency said.

Including Trump's name on paper check stimulus payments being sent to some Americans did not delay their distribution, as some critics had alleged, Treasury said in a letter made public Friday.

The letter, sent Thursday to the Senate Finance Committee's ranking member, Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin ultimately made the decision to include Trump's name, but not his signature, in the bottom left corner of the paper checks being sent to Americans who don't have bank account information on file with the IRS.

The letter was made public by Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

"As Treasury has stated publicly, checks are being issued on time, as planned," said the letter, signed by Frederick W. Vaughan, Treasury's principal deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Legislative Affairs. "Again, this decision has had no impact on the timing of the issuance of these checks."

The stimulus payments were authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act , which Trump signed into law in March. The legislation directs the IRS to send $1,200 to individual taxpayers and $2,400 to couples filing joint tax returns. The payments are reduced for those with incomes above $75,000 or $150,000 for couples. They are eliminated for people with incomes of more than $99,000 and $198,000 for couples.

Last week, the IRS announced that the payments would be mailed to recipients on time after reports suggested that adding Trump's name to the paper checks could delay the process.

Vaughan said Treasury is able to issue 5 million paper checks a week, and the department plans to make payments to other Americans with debit cards for those who don't have direct deposit information registered with the IRS.

Wyden asked Mnuchin on Tuesday about the decision to include Trump's name on the paper checks. He said the "unprecedented" choice to include Trump's name on the relief checks may have benefited the president politically at the expense of delaying the payments' delivery to Americans who desperately need them.

In response to a question from Wyden about whether previous economic stimulus checks included the president's name, Vaughan said that Treasury was not aware of any such examples but that records weren't adequate to answer the question.

Treasury's response confirmed that the move to include Trump's name on the stimulus checks was unprecedented, Wyden told Law360 in a statement.

"Only Donald Trump needed that ego boost in the middle of a pandemic and economic crisis," Wyden said.

Economic impact payments, as they have been called, are being directly deposited into the accounts of people whose banking information is on file with the Internal Revenue Service. Otherwise, the agency will send paper checks.

The payments will be automatically disbursed for several groups of people that typically haven't filed tax returns with the IRS, including those who receive Supplemental Security Income, military veteran benefits and Social Security benefits, Mnuchin has said.

--Additional reporting by Stephen Cooper and Theresa Schliep. Editing by John Oudens.

Update: This story has been updated with comment from Wyden.

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