Treasury Prevents $99 Million to Deceased Recipients Through Do Not Pay

Romina Boccia and Tyler Turman

Yesterday’s report by the Treasury Department shows that better pre-payment screening through the Do Not Pay (DNP) system can save taxpayers billions of dollars every year.

DNP is a data-sharing tool agencies use to cross-check applications against federal databases and flag improper payments before the money goes out the door. This saves taxpayers from footing the bill for agencies’ defaulting to the expensive and inefficient “pay and chase” approach of issuing erroneous payments and trying to recover them after the fact.

Do Not Pay’s Proven Track Record

As part of its effort to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs, the Trump administration issued an executive order in March 2025 to expand DNP’s use across the federal government. Since then, DNP has reportedly blocked more than 4,900 payments worth $99 million from going to deceased payees.

As Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it, “Together with Vice President Vance’s Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, this new safeguard addresses a longstanding vulnerability and helps ensure every dollar the federal government spends reaches its intended recipient.”

The results build on an already strong track record. In a three-year pilot that gave DNP access to the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) Death Master File, the system identified or prevented $113.5 million in improper payments at a cost of just $4.6 million, a 23-to‑1 return on investment, in the first year alone. After such remarkable success, Congress permanently authorized SSA to share its full death data with DNP in a bipartisan effort earlier this year.

In total, the Do Not Pay system helped agencies prevent, detect, and recover $11.7 billion in potential improper payments in fiscal year 2025.

Congress Still Has Work to Do

The savings from DNP’s improper payment prevention are a win for federal taxpayers, but they’re only a fraction of the $186 billion in payment errors the federal government reported in FY 2025.

Moreover, death-related overpayments accounted for just $1.5 billion in FY 2024. Far larger drivers of overpayments are not captured in DNP’s current databases, such as the following:

• Underreported financial data ($80.2 billion), such as an applicant’s assets, credit history, debt, and net worth.
• Employment status ($68.9 billion), such as whether an applicant is able to work, seeking work, or actively employed.
• Identity ($31.6 billion), such as checking an applicant’s claimed name against their Social Security number or taxpayer identification number.

DNP is also significantly underutilized. As Treasury official Renata Miskell points out, only 4 percent of eligible federal programs fully utilized the system in fiscal year 2024. Many states administering federal programs also lack access to the tool.

The Office of Management and Budget is moving to address this by expanding DNP’s availability to state and federal agencies through regulation. While executive action can direct agencies to use the tool more efficiently, it cannot grant DNP access to data that’s off-limits by statute. IRS tax return data to verify applicants’ incomes, for example, is protected under confidentiality rules that only Congress can amend.

Closing DNP’s biggest gaps requires legislation. The House took a step in this direction last month by passing three bills to strengthen the tool.

• The Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act (H.R. 8463), introduced by Rep. Comer (R‑KY), would require Treasury to work with agencies to verify payment and payee information through DNP before payments are issued, improve federal agencies’ access to the system, and expand the tool to verify applicants’ identity.
• The Stopping Fraudulent Payments Act (H.R. 8464), introduced by Rep. Comer (R‑KY), would require agencies to pause and take corrective action on payments that DNP flags as presenting an elevated risk of fraud and give Treasury authority to return suspicious payment vouchers to agencies for review.
• The Federal Fraud Prevention Workforce Training Act (H.R. 8428), introduced by Reps. Grothman (R‑WI) and Krishnamoorthi (D‑IL), would establish a government-wide training program on fraud risk management and tools like DNP, available to state and local agencies administering federal programs.

Congress can build on these reforms by helping agencies cross-check income and employment data by giving DNP access to IRS tax return data and the National Directory of New Hires, as the original version of the Pre-Payment Fraud Prevention and Treasury Data Access Act would have done.

The Do Not Pay System is a tool proven to strengthen the integrity of federal programs by helping agencies catch errors at the point of issuance. Expanding it further will help shift the government from issuing payments first and asking questions later to preventing improper payments before taxpayer dollars leave the Treasury.

Source: https://www.cato.org/blog/treasury-prevents-99-million-deceased-recipients-through-do-not-pay