WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Rudy Yakym (IN-02) called out the Biden-era IRS during a Ways and Means Committee hearing with current IRS Commissioner Frank J. Bisignano, highlighting nearly $450 million in improper payments the agency sent to ineligible recipients, including nonresident aliens, in the final weeks of the Biden administration.
“Nearly $450 million in taxpayer dollars are gone, handed out by the Biden IRS to nonresident aliens and other ineligible recipients,” Rep. Yakym said. “They call that going the extra mile; I call it a disgrace. Hoosiers work too hard for their money to watch it get handed out like this. Rooting out this kind of waste, fraud, and abuse is exactly what I was sent to Washington to do, and while the Biden administration may be gone, the accountability is not.”
Watch Rep. Yakym’s remarks HERE.
Background:
According to a new Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) report, in December 2024, just weeks before the Trump Administration took office, the Biden-era IRS quietly pushed out American Rescue Plan stimulus checks to 1.2 million people who had gone unclaimed for over three years.
Then-IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel justified the move, saying the agency had reviewed internal data and concluded that “one million taxpayers overlooked claiming this complex credit when they were actually eligible,” so the IRS decided to pay them out automatically.
“These payments are an example of our commitment to go the extra mile for taxpayers,” Werfel said.
However, a quarter of those recipients were not actually eligible.
In total, 301,000 improper payments totaling nearly $450 million in taxpayer dollars were sent to ineligible recipients. To date, the IRS has recovered only 29,000 of them.
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