2021 Child Tax Credit and advance Child Tax Credit payments — Topic E: Advance payment process of the Child Tax Credit

A1. Advance Child Tax Credit payments were disbursed in monthly installments from July through December 2021.

A2. If the IRS received the eligible individual's banking information, payment was sent as a direct deposit.

Generally, we used bank account information from the following sources, in the following order:

• Bank account information that the eligible individual provided in the Child Tax Credit Update Portal.
• The eligible individual's 2020 tax return, including information entered into the Child Tax Credit Non-filer Sign-up Tool in 2021.
• The eligible individual's 2019 tax return, including information entered into the Non-Filer tool on IRS.gov in 2020.
• Bank account information that the eligible individual provided to another federal agency to receive federal benefits including - Social Security benefits, Veterans benefits and benefits from the Railroad Retirement Board.

If we did not have direct deposit information from any of the sources described above, Treasury's Bureau of the Fiscal Service provided us with bank account information:

• From where the eligible individual received a U.S. Government payment, including through a Direct Express Card PDF, or
• That the Office of Personnel Management used for federal payroll allotments of the eligible individual.

If we did not have bank account information to issue a direct deposit, we sent advance Child Tax Credit payments by mail.

A3. If an eligible individual received advance Child Tax Credit payments through direct deposit to their bank account, the eligible individual’s bank statement identified those payments through the following description: “IRS TREAS 310 CHILDCTC”.

If the eligible individual received advance Child Tax Credit payments through Treasury checks by mail, the description on those Treasury checks provided the following description: “Advance Child Tax Credit Payment”.