Stimulus Funds Mailed to Dead People Recovered by Treasury

Stimulus funds amounting to $1.6 billion sent to people who are already dead have been recovered.

An official of the treasury department has told the Government Accountability Office that they have recovered about 70 percent or about $1 billion of the stimulus mistakenly sent to dead people back in May.

However, GAO said that they were unable to verify the amount with the Treasury Department before finalizing their report on Monday, August 31.

According to a Fox report, the GAO and the Treasury work together to determine the specific amount recovered from the funds sent to the dead.

The $1.6 billion sent to the dead people were part of the $2.2 trillion packages for coronavirus relief enacted in late March.

The package provided Americans with a one-time direct payment amounting to $1,200 for each adult and $500 for each child.

The GAO report had stated that the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service have sent out $164 million in payments, most of it disbursed in May.

In a report by The Hill, the IRS included the dead people on the list of those who would get the stimulus checks, according to GAO.

Perhaps this because under the CARES Act terms, dead people were not explicitly forbidden to receive the funds. And this was why the IRS systems included their names as they were not programmed to exclude them.

But later, IRS and Treasury had determined that people who had died when the payments made are no longer eligible to receive the funds.

In early May, the IRS updated its page of "frequently asked questions" by adding that stimulus funds sent to people who have already died should be returned.

In its June report, GAO made recommendations that the IRS should mull options that are cost-effective in notifying ineligible recipients how they can return the stimulus payments that they have already received.

On its latest report on Monday, GAO stated that the Treasury and the IRS have accepted the recommendation and have taken steps to implement it as well as other further options.

The IRS website now contains instructions on how to return payments sent to dead people while the Treasury has either withheld or canceled some of the payments intended for dead people.

The Washington Post had reported that the Treasury had also considered sending request letters asking to return the funds for the remaining payments that have not been recovered yet.

However, they have not pushed through with it because Congress had considered legislation clarifying or changing the payments' eligibility requirements.

GAO also made recommendations for Congress to allow the Social Security Administration to share with the Treasury its full data on deaths so stimulus funds will no longer be sent to ineligible individuals in the future.

The Senate had passed a bill in June about this recommendation.

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