IRS Sent Stimulus Checks To Over 1 Million Dead People
Leave it to the government to “accidentally” send out coronavirus stimulus checks to over one million dead people.
According a report from the Government Accountability Office, the IRS sent out approximately 1.1 million checks to deceased people, because of course they did. That amounts to approximately $1.3 Billion dollars.
Apparently these were sent to people who had died after filing last year’s taxes.
The Trump Administration sent more than a million stimulus checks worth $1.4 billion to deceased people, according to data released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office—the watchdog report comes as lawmakers continue to disagree on how to approach the economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
The GAO said the problem relates to the way data on who is deceased is made accessible to government agencies: the IRS has access to the Social Security Administration’s death records, but the arm of the Treasury Department that issued the stimulus payments does not.
In May, the IRS issued new guidance clarifying that a “payment made to someone who died before receipt of the payment should be returned” and provided instructions for sending back checks that were received in error.
It’s still not clear, however, whether survivors who received the checks in error are legally required to do that.
The GAO report also found that because of an error in how payment calculations were made, almost half a million households that used an online IRS tool for those who don’t file tax returns did not receive the $500 payments for children that they should have.
This comes at a time when President Trump is pushing for another round of stimulus checks.
The IRS started to recognize the problem back in May, and encouraged people to return the checks that had been sent to deceased relatives.
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/06/irs-sent-stimulus-checks-1-million-dead-people/