$703M In Stimulus Sent To Dead People Recovered, GAO Says

The U.S. Department of the Treasury has recovered around $703 million in payments the agency made to deceased people as part of the first round of direct coronavirus relief payments, the Government Accountability Office said in a report.

The recovered payments represent about 57% of the $1.2 billion in payments sent out to deceased individuals as part of the first round of economic impact payments, which were authorized by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act , the GAO said in its report, released Wednesday.

The Internal Revenue Service has decided not to take further actions to retrieve the remainder of the payments, such as opening cases against estates of the decedents, because those actions could be burdensome to the IRS and the public, according to the report.

The over 500-page GAO report reviewed the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic, including actions taken by the IRS and Treasury to implement the various tax provisions of coronavirus relief legislation passed in 2020 and 2021. These provisions included three rounds of direct payments, tax credits for employers, and expanded net operating loss carrybacks and carryforwards for businesses.

The GAO said in June 2020 that an IRS legal interpretation, finding that the agency couldn't deprive deceased people of payments if they had filed a tax return in 2019, helped lead the federal government to send over a billion dollars in payments to dead individuals. 

--Additional reporting by Mike LaSusa. Editing by Vincent Sherry. 

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