IRS sent stimulus checks to more than a million deceased
(KYMA, KECY)-Over a million dead Americans have received stimulus payment totaling $1.4 billion, a government watchdog agency reported Thursday.
The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) did not use death records to stop payments to deceased individuals when it distributed the first three batches of direct cash payments to Americans under a new federal law, the Government Accountability Office reported.
Back in March, Congress passed a massive $2 trillion stimulus package, called the CARES Act, in March to soften the economic blow of the coronavirus pandemic for American workers and businesses.
However, in order to meet the CARES Act, Treasury and the IRS sent out the first three batches of payments using previous operational policies and procedures for stimulus payments "which did not include using [Social Security Administration] death records as a filter to halt payments to decedents," according to NBC News.
The IRS does not have a plan in place to notify ineligible recipients, which includes the relatives of almost 1.1 million deceased Americans who received a payment as of April 30.Â
The Treasury Department said that people who received a stimulus check on behalf of someone that is deceased should return the money immediately.
