April 11, 2026, 11:00 p.m. ET
If you are looking for President Donald Trump‘s $2,000 tariff refunds in 2026 or wondering about the new $3,000 stimulus check proposal status and who qualifies for it, here is when and what you need to know.
Trump’s tariff dividend proposal to issue $2,000 refunds to “middle” and “lower income” households from the government’s tariff revenues was upended by the Supreme Court’s decision in February that the far-reaching tariffs were illegal, leaving U.S. Court of International Trade in New York and US Customs and Border Protection with issuing $166 billion in tariff refunds to the more than 333,000 US importers who absorbed the levies.
Since then, several Democratic lawmakers, such as Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker have taken actions to demand refunds to every household in their states, claiming their residents paid the brunt of tariffs through higher prices on goods.
These tariff refund demands for their constituents, mirror the concept of Trump’s prior tariff dividend proposal and pandemic stimulus checks.
A newer stimulus check proposal called the “Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act” was introduced last month by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt) and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif) that would establish a 5% annual wealth tax on the 938 billionaires in America and provide an annual $3,000 direct payment to every man, woman and child in a household making $150,000 or less.
Here is what to know about stimulus checks in 2026.
Are we getting a stimulus check in April 2026?
While multiple stimulus check and tariff refund proposals exist, none have been formalized or approved by Congress or the IRS to date.
There were three prior stimulus checks tied to COVID-era stimulus programs, the third and last of which had an April 15, 2025 deadline to claim. The opportunities to claim or file have now passed for all three stimulus checks.
Are we getting $3,000 checks?
Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Make Billionaires Pay Their Fair Share Act and the Ultra-Millionaire Tax Act sponsored by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and others, are in legislative proposal status, where bills have been introduced but have not been passed or considered.
The Sanders’ proposal would send $3,000 checks to many people each year, funded by a 5% tax on nearly 1,000 U.S. billionaires.
Speculation about a fourth stimulus check has surfaced on social media and unverified websites, however there has been no official confirmation from Congress or the Internal Revenue Service to support these claims and any such news should be taken with caution as the IRS warns it could be misinformation or attempted fraud.
When are we getting a $2,000 tariff dividend check? Trump tariff refund status
Although Trump promised tariff dividend checks to “middle income people and lower income people” from the “hundreds of millions of dollars” collected in tariff revenues to be issued “sometime in 2026, before the midterms,” those revenues are now in question after the Supreme Court tariff decision on Feb. 20.
There has been no order by the Supreme Court or Congress on how the refunding of the billions in tariff money already paid would work, to whom or when.
The U.S. Court of International Trade in New York is now deciding how the complicated tariff refund process should proceed.
Maria Francis is a Pennsylvania-based journalist with the Mid-Atlantic Connect Team.
