How this instrument works
The HEALS Act was Senate Republicans' answer to a second round of pandemic stimulus checks: a package of bills introduced July 27, 2020, the payment piece formally titled the American Workers, Families, and Employers Assistance Act (S. 4318). It set the same $1,200-per-adult, $500-per-dependent structure as the CARES Act it was modeled on, but negotiations with House Democrats over unemployment benefits collapsed weeks later, and no version of HEALS ever reached a floor vote. Congress passed a much smaller payment that December instead.
HEALS kept CARES's exact phase-out mechanism — the payment falls five cents for every dollar of adjusted gross income above a threshold set by filing status, reaching zero once the reduction equals the base amount — but changed one rule that mattered enormously: it dropped the under-17 age limit CARES placed on dependents. Under CARES, a family claiming a 19-year-old in community college or a disabled adult child got nothing extra for that person; under HEALS, that same dependent was worth the full $500, with no cap on how many dependents could be claimed.
Nobody ever received a HEALS check, because the bill never passed — this instrument reconstructs what the formula would have paid, which is how researchers, journalists and people comparing 2020's competing relief proposals use it now. It answers one narrow question, the scheduled amount from a given AGI, adult count and dependent count; it says nothing about the unemployment top-up, payroll-tax provisions or liability-shield language bundled into the rest of the HEALS package, and it cannot tell you whether the bill would have passed with those numbers unchanged.
- Enter the number of qualifying filers in Eligible adults — typically 1 for a single return or 2 for a joint one.
- Enter every qualifying dependent in Dependents (any age, no cap under HEALS), including adult dependents CARES would have excluded.
- Enter the return's Adjusted gross income, $ from the AGI line, not gross wages.
- Set Phase-out threshold, $ (filing-status dependent) to match the filer's status — HEALS kept CARES's $75,000 single / $150,000 joint bands.
- Compare Base payment before phase-out, $ against Estimated payment, $ to see how much AGI above the threshold erased.
Worked example — a joint filer at the $150,000 threshold
Take two adults and two dependents filing jointly, with adjusted gross income of $150,000 and a phase-out threshold of $150,000 for a joint return. The base payment is $1,200 times 2 adults plus $500 times 2 dependents, which is $2,400 plus $1,000, for a Base payment before phase-out, $ of $3,400. Because AGI sits exactly at the threshold, the amount above it is zero, so nothing is subtracted and the Estimated payment, $ comes out to the full $3,400.
Raise that same household's AGI to $170,000 while leaving the threshold at $150,000, and the excess is $20,000; five cents on each of those dollars removes $1,000, dropping the estimated payment to $2,400. Add two more dependents instead — HEALS placed no ceiling on the count — and the base payment rises to $4,400 before any phase-out, a household size the competing HEROES Act's three-dependent cap would have paid less for.
Questions
Did the HEALS Act ever send out stimulus checks?
No. HEALS was introduced by Senate Republicans on July 27, 2020, and stalled when negotiations with House Democrats over unemployment benefits broke down; no version reached a floor vote before the 116th Congress ended. Congress instead passed a smaller, $600-per-person second payment that December. This calculator reconstructs what HEALS would have paid had its formula become law.
How does HEALS differ from the CARES Act it copied?
The dollar amounts and the 5%-per-dollar phase-out are identical to CARES, but HEALS removed CARES's under-17 age limit on dependents. A college student, a disabled adult child, or an elderly parent claimed as a dependent was worth $500 under HEALS and nothing under CARES — the change that separated the two bills' totals for larger, multigenerational households.
How does HEALS compare with the rival HEROES Act?
Both bills paid dependents at a flat per-person rate with no age restriction, but HEROES capped the number of dependents a household could claim at three, while HEALS set no cap at all. A family with five children would have collected $500 for every one of them under HEALS, and payment for only three under HEROES's limit.
Why does the phase-out threshold depend on filing status?
Because HEALS carried over CARES's income bands rather than setting new ones: $75,000 for single filers, $150,000 for joint filers, and $112,500 for heads of household. Enter the figure matching the return's actual filing status in Phase-out threshold, $ (filing-status dependent) — the instrument does not infer it from the other fields.
Why did my estimated payment come out to zero?
Because the 5%-per-dollar reduction consumed the entire base payment before AGI ran out — at that rate, a base amount is fully erased once AGI clears the threshold by twenty times the base. A $3,400 base, for example, reaches zero at $68,000 above the threshold; the instrument floors the result there instead of showing a negative number.
Is this the same as the second stimulus check people actually received?
No. The payment Congress actually enacted in December 2020 paid $600 per adult and $600 per dependent under 17, with the age cap restored and a smaller total than HEALS proposed. HEALS was a negotiating position that never became law; treat this calculator's output as a historical reconstruction, not a record of any payment issued.
References
- Congress.gov — S.4318, American Workers, Families, and Employers Assistance Act
- IRS — Economic Impact Payments background
Read this first: This instrument shows arithmetic, not advice. Real offers add fees, taxes and terms that vary by lender and place — verify the figures against your actual paperwork before deciding anything.