{"id":374279,"date":"2022-08-16T06:03:35","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T20:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=374279"},"modified":"2022-08-16T06:03:35","modified_gmt":"2022-08-15T20:03:35","slug":"last-batch-of-2nd-local-stimulus-in-the-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/last-batch-of-2nd-local-stimulus-in-the-works\/","title":{"rendered":"Last batch of 2nd local stimulus in the works"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
David DLG Atalig<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig disclosed Friday that they have already distributed about $21 million for the second Local Economic Impact Payment, also known as local stimulus, and that they are now working on the last batch of pending error-free income tax returns.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a radio press briefing, Atalig said their first batch of local stimulus amounted to about $18 million and that they already probably spent an additional $2 million to $3 million.<\/p>\n

The administration set aside a total of $25 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding for the second local stimulus that would give $500 to each eligible filer and dependent in the CNMI.<\/p>\n

As to why there are some who have not received their stimulus cards yet, Atalig said the second round of stimulus requires a tax filer to have an error-free tax return.<\/p>\n

The first batch of 23,000 taxpayers and their dependents have already received their stimulus.<\/p>\n

Atalig said they order stimulus cards every two weeks and since the initial batch, they already issued about 4,000 more cards.<\/p>\n

\u201cLast week, we should be going through pretty much the last batch of pending error-free tax return. I don\u2019t have the details, there\u2019s not a lot more waiting unless they have issues with their tax returns,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Atalig noted that a lot of taxpayers have the errors where they did not report their Pandemic Unemployment Assistance income, or they did not report other additional income received.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it puts an error into their file,\u201d he said, adding that a lot of people have changed dependents in their tax returns and Tax and Revenue needs to verify if the information about their dependents are accurate.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo there\u2019s a lot of different issues. Those are just some examples that delay the stimulus cards going out,\u201d Atalig said.<\/p>\n

The Finance secretary, however, pointed out that the local stimulus program goes all the way to Dec. 31, 2022.He said a tax filer must clear his or her 2021 tax return and be error-free by Dec. 31, 2022, in order to quality for this program.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if you do have a stimulus card, you must spend these funds before Jan. 30, 2023,\u201d Atalig said. He said they need to make sure that these funds that are given out are used and that the whole purpose of the stimulus cards is to stimulate the CNMI\u2019s economy and to help the local business community\u2014not to give out and have someone save it.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want you to use it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Atalig said they are not holding back the stimulus cards as they are ordering every other week for those that clear and it takes about two weeks to get them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Finance Secretary David DLG Atalig disclosed Friday that they have already distributed about $21 million…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":374280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-374279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}