How this instrument works
By the summer of 2020, Congress had two competing answers to the question of a second stimulus check, and neither one passed. The House approved the HEROES Act on May 15, coupling a per-person payment to its broader relief package; the Senate answered on July 27 with the HEALS Act, built around a different dependent formula. The two chambers never reconciled the gap, and both proposals died in negotiation — the payment that actually shipped that December, under the CASH Act, was a flatter $600 per person, lower than either chamber's summer opening bid.
The formulas diverge in one place only: how a dependent is counted. The Senate's HEALS Act pays $1,200 per adult and $500 per dependent, with no cap on how many dependents qualify — the same split the original CARES Act used, minus its age-17 cutoff. The House's HEROES Act instead pays the full $1,200 for every person on the return, adults and dependents alike, but stops counting dependents once a household reaches three. For a typical family of four claiming two children, that structural choice is worth exactly $700 per dependent in the House's favor; for a rare household claiming eight or more, the Senate formula's uncapped headcount overtakes it, because $500 with no ceiling eventually beats $1,200 capped at three.
Both formulas share the identical income taper the CARES Act introduced: five cents off the payment for every dollar of adjusted gross income above a filing-status threshold, floored at zero. Neither bill touched that mechanic — the negotiating fight was over the base payment and the dependent count, not over who qualifies by income. Anyone running this today is usually reconstructing a hypothetical for a civics class, a news explainer, or a personal 'what if the House had won' comparison — no household can still file for either payment, since only the CASH Act's $600 figure was ever legally owed.
- Enter Eligible adults for the number of adults on the return, and Dependents for everyone else claimed.
- Set Adjusted gross income, $ to the household's AGI for the year being modeled.
- Set Phase-out threshold, $ to the filing-status figure both bills shared: $75,000 single, $150,000 joint, $112,500 head of household.
- Compare HEALS Act payment, $ against HEROES Act payment, $ to see what each chamber's formula assigns.
- Read HEROES minus HEALS, $ to see which plan pays more for this household, then push Dependents well past three to watch HEROES's lead shrink and eventually flip negative.
Worked example — a couple with two dependents at $150,000
Take a married couple with two dependents and a household AGI landing exactly on the joint-filer threshold. Enter adults = 2, dependents = 2, agi = 150000, and phaseoutThreshold = 150000. Since AGI sits exactly at the threshold, the excess is zero and the taper removes nothing from either formula. HEALS Act payment, $ works out to $1,200 × 2 plus $500 × 2, or $3,400. HEROES Act payment, $ works out to $1,200 × 2 plus $1,200 × 2 (dependents = 2 is still under the cap of three), or $4,800.
HEROES minus HEALS, $ returns $1,400 — the entire gap traces to the two dependents, each worth $700 more under the House formula ($1,200 versus $500). That $700-per-dependent gap holds for any household with three or fewer dependents; push Dependents to eight instead, keeping the other fields fixed, and HEROES stalls at its three-dependent cap while HEALS keeps adding $500 apiece, eventually overtaking it — the two curves cross somewhere past seven dependents.
Questions
Did the HEALS Act or the HEROES Act actually become law?
No. The House passed the HEROES Act on May 15, 2020, and Senate Republicans introduced the HEALS Act on July 27, 2020, but the chambers never reconciled the two, and both died without a floor vote in the other body. The second stimulus payment that actually went out, in December 2020 under the CASH Act, used a different formula entirely: a flat $600 per person with no distinct dependent rate.
Why does the House's HEROES Act pay more for dependents than the Senate's HEALS Act?
HEROES pays the full $1,200 for every person on the return, dependents included, while HEALS keeps the CARES Act split of $1,200 per adult and only $500 per dependent. For a household with three or fewer dependents that makes HEROES worth exactly $700 more per dependent — the gap this calculator's difference field reports.
At what dependent count does the Senate's HEALS Act start paying more?
Past roughly seven dependents. HEROES stops adding value after its third dependent because of its cap, while HEALS keeps adding $500 per dependent with no limit, so a very large household eventually earns more under the uncapped Senate formula than under the House's capped one, even though HEROES leads at every smaller household size.
Why do both formulas use the identical 5%-per-dollar phase-out?
Neither bill touched the income taper the CARES Act introduced. The negotiating disagreement between the chambers was entirely about the size of the base payment and how a dependent is counted, not about who qualifies by income, so both proposals inherited the same threshold and the same five-cent-per-dollar reduction rate unchanged.
Is the phase-out threshold the same number for both formulas?
Yes. Enter one figure into Phase-out threshold, $ and both HEALS Act payment, $ and HEROES Act payment, $ apply it identically — $75,000 for a single filer, $150,000 for a joint return, $112,500 for head of household, matching the bracket structure the CARES Act set and neither summer bill changed.
Who actually runs numbers through a calculator like this?
Mostly people reconstructing a comparison rather than a real payment: a civics or economics class contrasting how two chambers priced the same relief goal, a journalist explaining the size of the negotiating gap that summer, or someone curious how a specific household would have fared under the House's plan instead of the Senate's. No filing or claim follows from either number today.
References
- IRS — Economic Impact Payments (the rounds that were enacted)
- Congress.gov — H.R.6800, HEROES Act, 116th Congress
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.