HEALS vs HEROES stimulus calculator
A single filer with 50,000 of income and two dependents would have received 2,200 under the Senate's HEALS Act and 3,600 under the House's HEROES Act, a gap of 1,400. Both proposals side by side for your household. Free in your browser.
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Worked example
- Filing status
- Single
- Income
- 50,000
- Dependents
- 2
- Adults
- 1
- Phaseout threshold
- 75,000
- Phaseout reduction
- 0
- Heals gross
- 2,200
In the summer of 2020 the U.S. House had passed the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, known as the HEROES Act, while Senate Republicans offered the Health, Economic Assistance, Liability Protection and Schools Act, known as the HEALS Act. Both titles included a second round of recovery rebates—stimulus checks—built on the CARES Act adult amount of one thousand two hundred dollars and the same five-percent phase-out of adjusted gross income.
What the two 2020 bills paid and how the difference is signed
The additional recovery rebates in both the HEALS Act and the HEROES Act follow the CARES Act adult pattern: one thousand two hundred dollars for a single, married-separate, or head-of-household filer, and two thousand four hundred dollars for married filing jointly or a qualifying surviving spouse. That adult piece is identical in this calculator, so the gap between the bills is almost entirely about dependents and about how the shared phase-out bites a larger HEROES gross.
Under HEALS each dependent of any age—college students, adult children, disabled relatives, and parents, not only children under seventeen—adds five hundred dollars, and the published Senate title did not impose the three-dependent ceiling. Under the House-passed HEROES Act of May 2020 each such dependent adds one thousand two hundred dollars, but only the first three count, so a married couple with three or more dependents tops out at six thousand dollars before phase-out.
Both bills then reduce the rebate, but not below zero, by five percent of adjusted gross income above seventy-five thousand dollars for single and married-separate filers, one hundred twelve thousand five hundred for head of household, and one hundred fifty thousand for joint filers and qualifying surviving spouses. Gross HEALS is adults times twelve hundred plus dependents times five hundred. Gross HEROES is adults times twelve hundred plus the lesser of dependents or three times twelve hundred.
Phase-out reduction is five percent of the excess of income over the status threshold. Each amount is the greater of zero and that bill's gross minus the reduction.
Where a HEALS versus HEROES stimulus comparison earns its keep
Newsrooms and civic explainers still get searches for HEALS versus HEROES stimulus amounts when a chart needs a concrete household check, not a slogan about which chamber was more generous. Households and advisors reconstruct a 2020 filing from status, AGI, and dependents to see whether they sat below the phase-out—where both bills pay in full and HEROES is larger by seven hundred dollars per dependent up to three—or above it, where the same five-percent reduction can zero a HEALS check while a larger HEROES gross still has residual dollars.
Educators and exam writers need a deterministic oracle that rejects a negative dependents count instead of silently clamping it to zero, which would publish a fake rebate. Civic archives and legislative-history notebooks use the same three fields to reproduce published examples: a married couple with three dependents at one hundred fifty thousand of AGI takes the six-thousand-dollar HEROES ceiling and the three-thousand-nine-hundred-dollar HEALS gross, then the same phase-out if income rises. Failed validation does not consume balance.
Pin the rounded money fields in tests, keep requests to the three documented inputs, and you get reproducible HEALS-versus-HEROES estimates for articles, classrooms, and edge workers without standing up a tax-engine vendor.
What you can do with it
Household what-if on 2020 AGI
Enter filing status, adjusted gross income, and dependents to see the HEALS check, the HEROES check, and how many more dollars the House bill would have paid after the shared five-percent phase-out.
Classroom keys and legislative archives
Mark recovery-rebate items with an oracle that rejects a negative dependents count and that caps HEROES add-ons at three while leaving HEALS uncapped.
FAQ
What happens if the dependents count is negative?
A negative dependents count is not a household the bills described, so the calculator refuses to invent a rebate and is not billed.
Was either of these the second stimulus check that was actually paid?
No. This is a comparison of the 2020 HEALS and HEROES proposals. The calculator does not model that enacted round.
How much more would the HEROES Act have paid than HEALS?
Below the income phase-out, the gap grows with each dependent up to three, because HEROES adds 1,200 per dependent and HEALS adds 500. A single filer with 50,000 and two dependents gets 2,200 under HEALS and 3,600 under HEROES.
Can HEALS ever pay more than HEROES?
Yes, in the unusual case of many dependents. HEALS adds 500 for every dependent with no cap, while HEROES stops counting after three, so after the same income reduction HEALS can come out ahead.
Which dependents count under each bill?
Both count dependents of any age, including college students, adult children, disabled relatives and parents, not just young children. HEALS adds 500 for each one; HEROES adds 1,200 for each of the first three.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/stimulus-heals-vs-heroes \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"filing_status":"single","income":50000,"dependents":2}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/stimulus-heals-vs-heroes", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"filing_status": "single",
"income": 50000,
"dependents": 2
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/stimulus-heals-vs-heroes",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"filing_status": "single",
"income": 50000,
"dependents": 2
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/stimulus-heals-vs-heroes", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"filing_status":"single","income":50000,"dependents":2}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"filing_status":"single","income":50000,"dependents":2}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/stimulus-heals-vs-heroes", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"filing_status": "single",
"income": 50000,
"dependents": 2
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "fin.stimulus_heals_vs_heroes",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
They split on dependents: HEALS kept five hundred dollars for every dependent of any age, while HEROES paid one thousand two hundred dollars per dependent and capped that add-on at three. This calculator takes filing status, income, and a dependents count, returns both proposed amounts and the signed difference of HEROES minus HEALS, and rejects a negative dependents count instead of inventing a rebate.
What the two 2020 bills paid and how the difference is signed
Difference is HEROES amount minus HEALS amount: positive when the House bill would have paid more, zero when both phase out to the same floor, and negative only in the unusual case of many dependents where HEALS's uncapped five-hundred-dollar add-on outruns the HEROES three-dependent cap after the same reduction. The endpoint is a historical proposal comparison, not the six-hundred-dollar second check that later became law, and it is not tax advice.
Input contract, response shape, and error behaviour
Matching is case-insensitive and treats spaces or hyphens like underscores, so Married Joint and head-of-household both resolve. The value must be a non-negative integer. A short formula string restates the two bills so you can print it next to the numbers. The path never calls a revenue service, never samples randomness, and never reads the system clock, so goldens compare byte-for-byte when they pin the same three inputs. POST a JSON body with three required fields. filing_status selects the adult count and the phase-out threshold. The documented values are single, married_joint, married_separate, head_of_household, and qualifying_surviving_spouse; the alias status is accepted for the field name. Anything else is unrecognized and fails with invalid_input that names filing_status, instead of guessing single. income is adjusted gross income in dollars, the same idea as the CARES rebate lookback; aliases agi and amount are accepted. The value must be a finite number greater than or equal to zero; a missing field, an empty string, a non-finite value, or a negative amount fails with invalid_input naming income. dependents is the integer count of dependents of any age claimed on the return; aliases dependent_count and kids are accepted. A missing field or a non-integer fails with invalid_input. A negative dependents count fails with invalid_input whose message says the count must not be negative—those failures are not billed and are the contract this capability is written to enforce. On success the body echoes the canonical filing_status, income rounded half-up to cents, and dependents; reports adults (one or two) and phaseout_threshold for that status; reports phaseout_reduction as five percent of the excess over the threshold; then returns heals_gross and heroes_gross before the reduction, heals_amount and heroes_amount after it, and difference as heroes_amount minus heals_amount, all money fields rounded half-up to two decimal places. currency is USD.
Where a HEALS versus HEROES stimulus comparison earns its keep
Product teams embed the contract in planning tools so a slider on income updates heals_amount, heroes_amount, and difference without a spreadsheet of adult counts and dependent caps. When you later compare enacted EIP rounds in a workbook, keep this endpoint on the 2020 proposals so the dependent-cap contrast stays visible.
Integration use cases
Newsroom and explainer charts
Generate a deterministic heals_amount, heroes_amount, and difference for a stated household so a 2020 relief article can quote the dependent gap instead of a slogan about which chamber spent more.
Technical questions
How are HEALS and HEROES stimulus amounts calculated?
Both bills pay $1,200 per adult ($2,400 joint or qualifying surviving spouse). HEALS adds $500 per dependent of any age; HEROES adds $1,200 per dependent, counting at most three. Each total is reduced by 5% of AGI above $75,000 (single or married separate), $112,500 (head of household), or $150,000 (joint), never below zero. difference is heroes_amount minus heals_amount.
Which filing statuses are accepted?
single, married_joint, married_separate, head_of_household, and qualifying_surviving_spouse. Matching is case-insensitive. Any other value is unrecognized and the task fails with invalid_input.
What does the HEALS vs HEROES stimulus calculator cost?
The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.