How this instrument works
The HEROES Act — H.R. 6800, formally the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act — passed the House of Representatives on May 15, 2020, on a near party-line vote. It proposed a second round of payments built on the same $1,200-per-adult base as the CARES Act that had already gone out two months earlier, but it changed the dependent math: instead of CARES's flat $500 per qualifying child under 17, HEROES paid the full $1,200 for every dependent, of any age, up to a cap of three. The Senate never brought the bill to a vote, so no payment under this formula was ever issued; this instrument exists to answer what it would have paid, not what a reader is owed today.
The three-dependent cap is the detail that makes HEROES more generous for a typical household and less generous for a large one. A family with three or fewer children always does better under HEROES's $1,200-per-dependent rate than under CARES's uncapped $500 rate. The reason is arithmetic: HEROES's dependent portion tops out at 3 times $1,200, or $3,600, no matter how many children are listed, while CARES's dependent portion keeps adding $500 per child with no ceiling at all. Set 500 times the dependent count equal to $3,600 and the two rates cross at 7.2 dependents — a household reporting eight or more children would collect more from the enacted CARES formula's uncapped $500-per-child rate than from HEROES's higher-sounding, capped $1,200 rate.
Anyone running these numbers today is doing legislative accounting, not claiming a check: a congressional staffer comparing what the House and Senate proposals would have cost, a reporter checking a claim that one party's stimulus was more generous than the other's, or a researcher building a counterfactual budget model. The formula reproduces only the payment mechanics printed in the bill text — the per-person amount, the dependent cap, and the same 5-cents-per-excess-AGI-dollar phase-out CARES used — and says nothing about the bill's other provisions, like the expanded unemployment insurance and state aid that made up most of its roughly $3 trillion cost.
- Set Eligible adults to the number of adults on the return — HEROES paid $1,200 to each, the same rate CARES used.
- Enter Dependents (capped at 3 under HEROES) with the actual number claimed; the instrument counts at most three toward the payment.
- Enter Adjusted gross income, $ and Phase-out threshold, $ (filing-status dependent) — $75,000 single, $150,000 joint, $112,500 head of household, matching CARES.
- Read Dependents actually counted (max 3) and Base payment before phase-out, $ to see the cap take effect before any phase-out applies.
- Check Estimated payment, $ for the final figure, after the 5%-of-excess-AGI phase-out is subtracted from the base.
Worked example — a couple with four children
Take a married couple, 2 eligible adults, with four children and household AGI of $150,000, exactly at the phase-out threshold for joint filers. Enter adults = 2, dependents = 4, agi = 150000, and phaseoutThreshold = 150000. Because HEROES caps the dependent count at three, Dependents actually counted (max 3) shows 3, not 4 — the fourth child adds nothing to the payment.
Base payment before phase-out, $ comes to $6,000: $1,200 times the sum of 2 adults and 3 counted dependents. Since AGI sits exactly at the $150,000 threshold, the phase-out subtracts nothing — the excess over the threshold is zero — so Estimated payment, $ also reads $6,000. That figure is identical to what a couple with exactly three children, or eight, would have received at the same AGI: the cap makes the payment insensitive to family size once it passes the third dependent.
Questions
Did anyone actually receive a payment under the HEROES Act formula?
No. The House passed H.R. 6800 in May 2020, but the Senate never brought it to a floor vote, and it was never signed into law. This calculator reconstructs the payment the bill's text describes; it is a legislative-accounting tool, not a record of, or a claim process for, money that was ever issued.
Why would a family with many children have gotten less under HEROES than under CARES?
Because HEROES capped the dependent count at three while paying $1,200 per counted dependent, its dependent portion never exceeds $3,600 no matter how large the family. CARES paid a smaller $500 per dependent but placed no cap on the count, so its dependent portion kept growing with each child. The two rates cross at 7.2 dependents — above that, CARES's uncapped $500 rate actually pays more.
How does the phase-out threshold in this calculator work?
It subtracts 5 cents from the base payment for every dollar of AGI above the threshold you enter, the same taper CARES used, until the payment reaches zero. HEROES did not propose a different phase-out mechanism — filing status sets where the threshold sits ($75,000 single, $150,000 joint, $112,500 head of household), and you enter that figure directly.
Why do dependents of any age count here, unlike some other stimulus calculators?
CARES paid $500 only for a qualifying child under age 17, so a household claiming a college student or a dependent parent got nothing extra for that person. HEROES dropped the age test entirely — any dependent claimed on the return counted toward the capped $1,200 rate, part of why the bill was framed as more generous for non-traditional households.
How is this different from the HEALS Act calculator on this site?
HEALS was the Senate Republican counterproposal released in July 2020, and it kept a structure closer to CARES — a full $1,200 per adult alongside a smaller per-dependent amount, rather than matching the adult rate. Both bills died without becoming law, but a childless single filer's own base payment and phase-out are calculated identically under either formula.
Does entering a filing status change the phase-out here?
This calculator has no filing-status field — you enter the Phase-out threshold, $ directly. Look up the figure CARES used for the relevant filing status ($75,000 single, $150,000 married filing jointly, $112,500 head of household) and enter it yourself; HEROES inherited these same three thresholds from CARES.
References
- Congress.gov — H.R.6800, the HEROES Act (116th Congress)
- IRS Newsroom — Economic Impact Payment guidance
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.