2021 Child Tax Credit: Here's who will get up to $1,800 per child in cash ? and who will need to opt out

"You will have to pay that money back."In contrast, the stimulus payments' treatment of overpayment amounted to "a big 'Get out of jail' card," he said.The IRS last week flagged the overpayment issue: "If you receive a total amount of advance Child Tax Credit payments that exceeds the amount of Child Tax Credit that you can properly claim on your 2021 tax year, you may need to repay to the IRS some or all of that excess payment," it said on its website.Under the American Rescue Plan, the CTC was expanded to $3,600 for each child under age 6 and $3,000 for each child between ages 6 to 17. Previously, the credit had excluded children who had turned 17 and was limited to $2,000 per child.Aside from having children who are 17 or younger as of December 31, 2021, families will only qualify for the expanded credit if they fall below certain income thresholds:The IRS on Tuesday said it had created a website that will allow people to check whether they qualify for the benefit, called the Child Tax Credit Eligibility Assistant. The IRS said if people don't have a copy of their return, they may be able to use an estimate based on their W-2s or 1099s to determine eligibility.The IRS pointed out that the Child Tax Credit Eligibility Assistant isn't a registration tool — it only tells people if they are likely to qualify for the payments. Higher-income families who earn above those income thresholds don't qualify for either the regular CTC or enhanced CTC.For parents, the payments will amount to:That means that a qualifying family with two parents who file a joint tax return and have two children under 6 will receive $600 in monthly payments for six months, starting July 15 and ending December 15. Over the course of the period, they'll receive $3,600 in cash from the IRS for their two children.Typically, nothing, said Steber of Jackson Hewitt."They have to do nothing if their situation was the same as their 2020 tax return — if their address is the same, their bank account is the same, same number of dependents," Steber said.The IRS already sent letters to 36 million families who are eligible based on either their 2019 or 2020 federal income tax return, or if they provided information using the "non-filers tool" on the IRS.gov website last year to register for a stimulus payment and qualified based on that data.