This is an odd problem with the current stimulus payment. First a little background. My wife and I are both retired, age 69 and have always filed joint returns. My wife is on social security and I have been receiving spousal benefits on her record. I will be 70 in a couple of months, so I applied for full SS benefits last month and was told my application is in process and everything is in order.
Now here is the issue. For the original stimulus payment last year, we went on the IRS "Get My Payment" site when it became operational and had to add our direct deposit information, since we had never received a refund electronically. We then checked periodically, and at some point it stated that our deposit was scheduled to be deposited by a specific date in May
2020. We got the same result no matter which SSN we entered. Our $2400 stimulus payment was deposited into our account as scheduled in May 2020 with no issues. It was deposited as one single payment to our joint checking account. All good.This year, I went onto the site earlier this week using my SSN to see what the status of our payment was and I got the message that says "Payment #2 Status - Not Available" and some words that said "We don't have enough information yet." That didn't concern me because we had gotten a similar message last year when the stimulus payments were first announced. But the strange part is that when we went on the site using my wife's SSN we got a message saying that a check would be mailed on January 6th (yesterday). Today, we received a check from the IRS addressed just to my wife for $600. I then went on the IRS Get My Payment site using my SSN and it still says "Not Available". Anyone have any idea of my wife got a check but I didn't? In nearly 40 years of marriage, we have always filed joint returns, and every check we have ever gotten from IRS was issued to both of your names. Under all possible calculation rules, we are entitled to $600 each for this current stimulus or $1200 total. The only possible thing I can think of is that my application to receive my own social security benefits at age 70 somehow confused things, though I can't understand why.
What should I do at this point? I have heard that calling the IRS about stimulus check issues is pointless, and I'm not sure who else I could call. I can give it some time to see if the status changes on the "Get My Payment" site, but I honestly haven't heard of couples who filed joint returns getting separate payments like this. And that's not even addressing the issue of why we got a check when the IRS had our electronic information and had made the last deposit directly to our account.
Any suggestions?