The government is sending stimulus payments to people that are deceased. According to Politico, some say it’s because the IRS is under pressure to distribute payments to 150-million Americans as quickly as possible, even as people are dying rapidly from COVID-19.
Although the IRS is normally supposed to check death records before sending payments, the publication reports that there is no real-time data on who is passing away due to the lagging in reporting deaths from the states.
“There are gaps in the process,” said Jack Smalligan, a former top official at the White House budget office. “It’s inevitable.”
Although it’s not many, people across social media are posting about payments going to their deceased relatives, with many saying this further proves of the government’s mismanagement.
“This is insane, but just the tip of the iceberg,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) wrote on Twitter, as he revealed a friend received the $1200 payment for his late father.
The IRS has not said how it will handle the issue, but Trump said Friday that he wants the money to be returned.
“Sometimes you send a check to somebody wrong,” Trump said. “We’ll get that back.”
Back in 2009, President Obama’s stimulus package sent $250 payments to millions of seniors and veterans, but 71,000 payments went to people who had died.
The Social Security Administration is in charge of tracking the death of Americans because they’re responsible for sending monthly checks to millions of people. Hence why they need to know who is alive and who has passed.
“SSA has a responsibility to make sure the benefits it’s putting out are going to people who are not deceased, and it’s ended up assuming that broader responsibility for the entire government because it makes no sense for multiple federal agencies to be compiling the same information,” said Smalligan.
The Social Security Administration has data on more than 120 million deaths, dating back to 1936, and on average, they receive about 2.5 million death notices a year, which usually comes from state governments.
That information is then shared with the IRS, but it may take some time to populate on the “death master file,” and sometimes deaths are never reported.
There is no timetable on when COVID-19 deaths will show up in the records. Social Security says they update the files weekly.
The Treasury expects to send payments to 170 million Americans, and Congress is requesting the IRS to use whatever tax information it has on file from previous tax filings, which in some cases, could be a year old.
A spokesperson for the Treasury Department or IRS has not said whether or not the government would ask for the money back.
