By Dylan Moroses

Law360 (April 17, 2020, 5:17 PM EDT) -- Veterans who receive benefits from the federal government will automatically receive tax rebate checks authorized by Congress to provide economic relief from the novel coronavirus pandemic, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Friday.

Veterans need take no additional action to receive the payments, Mnuchin said in a statement. The Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of the Treasury have been coordinating with the Department of Veterans Affairs to distribute the payments quickly to beneficiaries, he said.

"Economic impact payments will be issued automatically to our veterans and their families who did not file tax returns for 2018 or 2019," Mnuchin said.

The announcement follows letters that House and Senate lawmakers wrote to Mnuchin and IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig last week urging them to coordinate with VA to ensure veterans benefit recipients didn't have to file additional information to receive their stimulus checks.

Late last month, President Donald Trump signed into law the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act , a $2 trillion package of relief measures aimed at supporting jobless Americans, boosting business activity and providing resources for health care workers.

Under the CARES Act, the IRS has begun to send $1,200 to individuals and $2,400 to couples filing joint tax returns, along with an additional $500 per qualifying child. The payments will be reduced for those with incomes above $75,000, or $150,000 for couples, and they will be eliminated for those with incomes of more than $99,000, or $198,000 for couples.

Initially, the IRS said those who did not regularly file tax returns would need to provide information to the agency to receive the payments, prompting an outcry from lawmakers.

Earlier in April, Mnuchin said that seniors and disabled individuals who receive Social Security benefits wouldn't have to file tax returns to receive the checks. He said the IRS would use information it already had on certain Social Security forms to distribute the relief payments to the program's beneficiaries without requiring them to file returns.

And on Wednesday, the IRS announced that beneficiaries of the Supplemental Security Income program would also receive their coronavirus relief checks automatically following similar calls to the agency by House Ways and Means Committee Chair Richard Neal, D-Mass., and the American Bar Association's Section of Taxation.

The IRS said that to receive additional funds for any children who qualify, SSI beneficiaries would have to provide information about them to the agency online.

A Treasury spokesperson didn't immediately respond to a request for further comment.

--Additional reporting by Stephen Cooper, Joshua Rosenberg and Theresa Schliep. Editing by Robert Rudinger.

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