How many children do you have? What are the ages of the children? The advance child tax credit was either $250 per month for children 6 or older, or $300 per month for children under 6. If you received payments from July to December, you would have received at least $1500, if not more. The IRS sent letter 6419 to EACH parent if you filed a joint return, and you have to use the amount from each of those letters so that you enter the total that was received.
It sounds like you may have made the mistake of entering only the amount from one of your letters. If you did that then you had too much on line 28 of your tax return, and the IRS then re-calculated the amount you could get for the remaining CTC.
Check your deposits from July to December, and check online IRS accounts for EACH of you to see how much the IRS actually sent to you between July and December.
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