Haven’t gotten your $600 stimulus check? Here’s when more Californians may get them

Millions more Californians will get $600 to $1,100 payments from the state in the next couple weeks.

Through its Golden State Stimulus, the state has already sent more than $1.8 billion to eligible taxpayers in the last few weeks, according to the Franchise Tax Board. The last batch of payments to some 2 million Californians was sent last week on Sept. 17.

Another batch of payments will be sent on Oct. 5. By then, the state will also begin sending out paper checks for those who had chosen to receive their tax refunds that way, according to the Franchise Tax Board.

It may take a few business days for the payments to show up through direct deposit. It may take up to three weeks for the paper checks to arrive once they are mailed, the board’s spokesman, Andrew LePage, said in an e-mail.

The board will continue to send the money through batches of direct deposits and paper checks, with the hope of issuing nearly all payments by the end of the year, LePage said.

To be eligible for the payments, Californians must file their 2020 tax returns by Oct. 15. Only those who made less than $75,000 in 2020 are eligible, and they must have been a California resident for more than half of 2020.

Those who don’t have dependents will get $600, while those who do will get $1,100.

Those who got $600 checks back around May through Golden State Stimulus are also eligible to receive a $500 check — $1,000 if they are undocumented Californians with Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers who didn’t receive federal stimulus — this time as well as long as they have one or more dependent. Otherwise, they won’t receive money from the state.

Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans for the stimulus payments in May as the state accumulated a record $76 billion budget surplus driven by income tax collected from the state’s wealthiest residents. The state was required to give some of its surplus back to its taxpayers to comply with a government spending cap California voters approved by ballot initiative in 1979.

The Golden State Stimulus program is expected to cost $12 billion in total for the state.