US accidentally sends out coronavirus payments to 1.1 million dead Americans

COVID-19 stimulus payments were sent out to over a million Americans who had already died, according to NBC News, totalling in US $1.4 billion.

The discovery was made by the Government Accountability Office, an independent nonpartisan congressional agency after they conducted a thorough review of the U.S. federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department rolled out over 160 million payments to Americans amounting to a total of US $269 billion, and critics are calling the rollout disorganized and muddled.

The US $2 trillion stimulus package, entitled the CARES Act, was passed by Congress in March to alleviate the economic blow for Americans brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Americans who were eligible to receive the financial aid, called Economic Impact Payments, received amounts based on their 2018 or 2019 income tax returns, or by filling out a simple tax return.

Americans who made up to $75,000 annually received checks for $1,200 and couple making as much as $150,000 who filed joint tax returns were eligible for $2,400 and another $500 for each qualifying child.

Payments would decrease for those making above $75,000 and the income cap was $99,000 per individual and $198,00 for couples.

Initially, Treasury officials planned to deliver payments as "rapidly as possible" so they could meet the CARES Act's mandate. The first three batches of the payments were sent out based on the old operational policies and procedures for stimulus payments but as GAO's report points out, this "did not include using [Social Security Administration] death records as a filter to halt payments to decedents."

The report also noted that IRS's legal counsel had "determined that the IRS did not have the legal authority to deny payments to those who filed a return for 2019, even if they were deceased at the time of payment,"

Americans all across the country began reporting that they had received payments based on behalf of their deceased loved ones however due to a backlog things went unnoticed. Many Americans believed they would be allowed to keep the payments until the IRS updated their guidance policy in May asking that payments made out to deceased Americans "should be returned to the IRS."

As it stands, the IRS does not have a plan in place to notify Americans who received ineligible payments on behalf of their deceased family members. According to the GAO's report, that number is estimated to be around 1.1 million Americans.