The federal government finds millions of ways to waste taxpayer money.
The egregiously inefficient IRS can’t even give American citizens their hard-earned dollars back without botching the process.
An inspector general’s report revealed the IRS handed out upwards of $64 million in stimulus funding to deceased individuals after Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law.
IRS gave $64 million in stimulus checks to dead people: report#JustTheNewshttps://t.co/QCQOdgtjRX
— John Solomon (@jsolomonReports) March 28, 2022
The IRS sent $64 million in erroneous payments to as part of the American Rescue Plan due to a computer error of which the agency was aware but did not fix, according to an inspector general report.#JustTheNewshttps://t.co/9POzOBjrah
— Just the News (@JustTheNews) March 28, 2022
Nearly 45,000 total payments were sent to Americans with deceased dependents who died before January 1st, 2021, making them ineligible Biden’s stimulus payments of up to $1,400.
Just the News reported that the issue was caused by a computer error the IRS knew about but didn’t solve in time.
“We alerted the IRS to this programming error in April 2021. IRS management agreed that these payments were issued erroneously. However, IRS management did not provide their corrective action to address future erroneous payments,” the treasury inspector general stated in a report released last week.
The IRS went on to issue more than 400 additional incorrect payments for those with a deceased dependent after being alerted to the issue, the watchdog said.
In total, more than $100 million was incorrectly issued due to computer programming errors up to September 2021, the inspector general stated.
IG estimates show $1.9 billion was was erroneously paid to more than one million people. More than half a billion of that went to over 300,000 “potential ineligible nonresidents.”
The IRS agreed that there was an issue with all except about 130,000 of the payments. The agency then “implemented programming changes,” according to the inspector general’s report.
A previous watchdog report found early pandemic payments had even more problems, but slightly less money was went to nonresidents. In July 2020, $3.5 billion was given to nearly 2.2 million people who were deceased. More than $440 million was given to over 320,000 nonresidents at that time.
In total, by July 2020, more than 4.4 million people incorrectly received $5.5 billion, according to the inspector general.
Read the Treasury Inspector General report HERE.
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