The last round of $600 payments issued by California will conclude the state’s pandemic stimulus program by Jan. 11, the Franchise Tax Board said Wednesday.

The 180,000 payments in this final round, valued at roughly $127 million, started in late December and will trickle through January, the agency said in an email Wednesday. A previous round of 794,000 GSS II payments worth some $568 million went out between Dec. 13-31.

Since late August, the Golden State Stimulus II program has issued some 8.2 million checks and direct deposits valued at just over $5.9 billion. The program is part of Gov. Gavin Newsom’s pandemic recovery plan. The $600 payments were intended for California’s middle-income residents who earn less than $75,000 in adjusted gross income. Qualifying families got an additional $500 for dependents.

Early in the program, most of the stimulus payments were distributed by direct deposit for residents who filed their 2020 taxes electronically and provided a bank account for the tax return’s deposit.

But some qualifying recipients such as Joe Rocca in San Clemente never received a direct deposit and were left wondering if a payment would land at all. “Another wonderfully run program by our state government,” he said in November.

Rocca let us know his payment did arrive in the form of a paper check in late December.

“We did get it a week or so ago,” he said. “Only about two months after we should have gotten it. Better late than never.”

The state also launched another pandemic program called Golden State Stimulus I that went to lower-income residents who earned less than $35,000 in AGI.

We asked the Franchise Tax Board to catch us up on where the program is now. Media liaison Andrew LePage with the FTB offered these answers:

Q: How many payments went out in December, before Jan. 1, 2022?

A: Between Dec. 13 and Dec. 31 about 794,000 GSS II checks valued at more than $568 million were mailed and about 9,000 direct deposits valued at about $6.1 million were issued Dec. 10.

The latest round: Between Dec. 27 and Jan. 11, 2022, the state is scheduled to mail about 180,000 GSS II checks. Also, on Dec. 24 the state issued about 1,400 GSS II direct deposits. Combined, the roughly 181,400 GSS II payments in the latest round are valued at about $127 million.

Q: How many payments are going out in 2022?

A: The final scheduled round calls for GSS II payments to be mailed between Dec. 27 and Jan. 11. A relatively small number of payments will continue to go out after Jan. 11. (More on that below.)

Q: Total amount of payments made since the GSSII program began?

A: As of the latest round, the state has issued or announced a total of more than 8.2 million GSS II checks and direct deposits valued at just over $5.9 billion.

At this point, the vast majority of GSS II payments have been issued or announced.

Recently we’ve used a very rough estimate of a total of 8.5 million GSS II payments when all have been issued. The latest trends indicate that the final total could be between 8.3 million and 8.4 million GSS II payments.

Q: Any leftovers to note?

A: FTB continues to work through a relatively small number of tax returns that for a variety of reasons require additional processing to ensure eligibility, and an unknown number of ITIN filers have until Feb. 15, 2022, to file their state return to be eligible for GSS. These are ITIN filers who did not have an ITIN but had applied for one by the Oct. 15, 2021, tax filing deadline.

Check your ZIP code: According to the GSS II website, the distribution schedule for this final week is heading to residents with ZIP codes ending with 928-999.

Here’s the fine print

To qualify for the payments, residents must:

  • File 2020 taxes by Oct. 15, 2021;
  • Have adjusted gross income of $1 to $75,000 for the 2020 tax year;
  • Be a state resident for more than half of the 2020 tax year;
  • Be a state resident the date payment is issued;
  • Cannot be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer;
  • A dependent is a qualifying child or qualifying relative.

As previously reported, excluded from the payments are those whose income is solely derived from benefits such as Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and State Supplementary Payment (SSP) and the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants (CAPI), Social Security, CalWorks, unemployment, state disability insurance (SDI) and VA disability.

To get an estimate on your California stimulus payment, go to ftb.ca.gov