Center for Federal Accountability

IRS proposes opening Trump accounts automatically, with the tax data behind them held by Treasury's financial agent

A proposed IRS rule would have the Treasury Secretary open a Trump account for each eligible individual without a sign-up, keep the return information used to do so with an unnamed financial agent, and require anyone claiming an account to prove their identity and authority. The notice does not cite a Privacy Act notice or privacy impact assessment for those records. Comments close November 30, 2026.

2026-10-03 · Internal Revenue Service, Treasury Department · Information · Docket CC-00226466-26

On September 30, 2026, the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service proposed rules under which the Treasury Secretary would open a Trump account for eligible individuals without waiting for a parent or anyone else to sign them up, a process the notice calls auto enrollment (91 FR 61812). The proposal also sets rules for qualified general contributions, including gifts of stock, that private donors can fund for groups of account holders. It withdraws a March 9, 2026, proposal (91 FR 11194) that left most account openings to others. Comments and requests for a public hearing are due November 30, 2026, under docket CC-00226466-26 (RIN 1545-BR91). The Federal Register record CFA saved on October 2 listed no regulations.gov docket, so CFA cannot report a comment count.

## What would change

Section 530A of the Internal Revenue Code, which created Trump accounts, lets the Secretary make the election that opens a person's first account (section 530A(b)(2)(C)(i)). The March proposal used that power only in a narrow case: when an election came from someone not authorized to make it. The new notice says the agencies did not have time, before contributions could first be made on July 4, 2026, to resolve "the legal and administrative issues associated with implementing broad automatic enrollment, including the need to prevent the unauthorized disclosure of return information" (91 FR 61813).

Commenters on the March proposal urged the Secretary to enroll everyone who meets the age and Social Security number requirements, using tax returns, Social Security Administration records and other authorized sources. They said a sign-up step would leave out nonfilers and families with little time. The agencies now propose automatic enrollment, and describe the shift as "the development of a different administrative structure, rather than a change" in how they read the statute.

The regulatory text itself is not printed in the proposal. Proposed §§ 1.530A-1 and 1.530A-7 repeat temporary regulations (§§ 1.530A-1T and 1.530A-7T) published in the same issue, and the notice tells taxpayers to rely on the temporary rules, not the proposal (91 FR 61812, 61814).

## How auto accounts would work

Each eligible individual would get a separate account under its own written governing instrument, with its own records. The notice calls these auto accounts. Contributions are recorded account by account, but the money is invested together through a master group trust intended to meet Revenue Ruling 81-100. Each auto account holds a proportional share of the trust's investments, and program records identify the assets that belong to each account (91 FR 61813).

The agencies say this design is what protects tax data. The trust's trustee can trade "without receiving or disclosing account-identifying return information for each account beneficiary." The return information used to identify eligible individuals and set up accounts "is retained in a safeguarded environment by the Secretary and his financial agent authorized to receive that information on the Secretary's behalf."

Until someone claims an auto account, the Secretary is its responsible party. To claim one, a person must submit the information the Secretary requires, "authenticate the person's identity, establish the person's legal authority to act with respect to the account and to receive the account beneficiary's return information," and sign any consent needed to process the claim and move the balance.

## The numbers

The Paperwork Reduction Act section estimates 63,360,000 respondents claiming auto accounts once each, for 6,336,000 burden hours a year. It also estimates 5 trustees sending 27,717 notices each when stock in an account is delisted or replaced by property that does not qualify, for 2,310 hours (Table 2, 91 FR 61815). The agencies expect 4,600 Trump account trustees, about 2,740 of them small businesses (91 FR 61816).

CFA checked the arithmetic. Table 2 lists the burden per response as "6" and "1" without a unit. The totals work only if those figures are minutes: 63,360,000 claims at 6 minutes each is 6,336,000 hours, and 138,585 notices at 1 minute each is about 2,310 hours. Read as hours, the first line would come to 380,160,000. The collections were approved under OMB control number 1545-2336 through the emergency procedures in 5 CFR 1320.13.

## Questions the agencies have not settled

ABLE accounts. A Trump account's entire balance can be moved to an ABLE account, a tax-favored account for people with disabilities, during the calendar year the beneficiary turns 17. Before an auto account is claimed, the Secretary "generally will not know" whether the beneficiary is eligible for an ABLE account or who controls one. The agencies offer two approaches, a direct transfer as part of the claim or a claim first and a transfer after, and ask whether ABLE programs should have to find auto-account holders before the deadline passes (91 FR 61813–14).

Geographic areas. Donors can fund contributions for everyone living in a qualified geographic area with at least 5,000 account beneficiaries. The agencies are considering areas built from five-digit ZIP codes that either are contiguous without enclosing excluded ZIP codes, or all have a median household income, by Census Bureau ZIP Code Tabulation Area, below the highly compensated employee threshold in section 414(q).

Disclaimers. A beneficiary aged 18 or older could give up an unclaimed auto account that has not received the $1,000 pilot program contribution under section 6434, no later than nine months after turning 21. The agencies ask what notice beneficiaries should get first, and "the information that may be disclosed consistently with section 6103," the tax code's confidentiality rule.

## CFA's observations

The notice describes the return information behind auto enrollment only as kept "in a safeguarded environment" by the Secretary and a financial agent. CFA observes that it does not name the agent, describe the safeguards, or cite a Privacy Act system of records notice or privacy impact assessment for auto-account records; it does not mention the Privacy Act at all. The only legal protection it names is section 6103. It also does not say how a claimant's identity will be authenticated or what evidence will establish authority over a child's account. Those details may be in the temporary regulations or in Treasury records CFA could not read for this draft, so this observation is limited to the notice itself.

## CFA's records on Treasury

The Treasury Department holds a "Minor" grade on CFA's agency scoreboard, with a composite score of 79.91 based on 5 areas, for the September 2026 period. That is the lowest composite among the ten agencies CFA grades; the government-wide composite is 83.38. The grade does not measure Trump accounts or this rulemaking. CFA's crawl has not collected any privacy impact assessments from the IRS or Treasury websites, so CFA's own data cannot show whether one covers auto accounts.

## What to watch

Whether Treasury names its financial agent and publishes a system of records notice and privacy impact assessment for auto-account records before the rule is final.

How claimants will authenticate their identity and prove their authority, and whether the emergency approval of collection 1545-2336 is followed by a standard review with public notice.

Which ABLE rollover approach and disclaimer rule the final rule adopts, and how the ZIP-code test for qualified geographic areas is set.

Comments can be filed on regulations.gov (indicate IRS and CC-00226466-26) or mailed to CC:PA:01:PR (CC-00226466-26), Room 5503, Internal Revenue Service, P.O. Box 7604, Ben Franklin Station, Washington, DC 20044, by November 30, 2026. Comments are made public and cannot be edited or withdrawn once submitted. A public hearing will be scheduled only if someone who comments asks for one in writing.

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