The Treasury Department automatically enrolled more than 60 million children in Trump Accounts this week, expanding the savings program while leaving families responsible for claiming the accounts and securing federal contributions for eligible newborns.
The department said Thursday that it had completed the enrollment process after proposing the rules Tuesday. The accounts are available to children under 18 with Social Security numbers, but opening one does not automatically trigger the $1,000 federal deposit available to children born from 2025 through 2028.
“Millions of children have already enrolled in Trump Accounts. With automatic enrollment, over 60 million more eligible children now have an account ready to be claimed,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said.
The announcement, shared with CNBC, marks a sharp expansion from the roughly 7 million to 8 million voluntary enrollments Bessent reported at a House Financial Services Committee hearing in mid-September. The accounts, formally known as 530A accounts, opened July 4.
Parents or guardians must claim an account before accepting contributions from relatives, friends or employers. Treasury instructs them to download the Trump Accounts app, verify their identity and relationship to the child, review the account information and accept the terms.
“Kids who are eligible for the $1,000 government pilot contribution won’t receive that contribution automatically,” Ben Henry-Moreland, a certified financial planner with advisor platform Kitces.com, told CNBC.
Automatic enrollment could nevertheless allow children to receive certain philanthropic contributions before their families activate the accounts. Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, have pledged $6.25 billion to provide $250 contributions for children born between 2016 and 2024 who live in ZIP codes with median incomes of $150,000 or less.
“The rulemaking essentially introduces the idea of auto accounts, created for every child under 18 with a Social Security number,” said Madeline Brown, senior policy associate at the Urban Institute. “This means that children won’t miss out on philanthropic gifts, like money from the Dells, or growth on those gifts, even if an account has not been activated for them.”
Brown said details about claiming the accounts remain limited. She said the earlier opt-in structure presented obstacles to broad participation, particularly among lower-income families, and that automatic enrollment better reflects research on increasing participation.
Treasury also issued temporary rules allowing donations of individual stocks, expanding earlier guidance that limited account holdings to diversified, low-cost funds. Donated shares generally must remain in the accounts for five years before being sold, a change the department said could encourage large private contributions.
“Wealthy founders and shareholders have been pushing to donate stock directly” because doing so avoids the capital gains taxes incurred by selling shares and donating the proceeds, Henry-Moreland said.
The expansion comes after the stock market has grown by roughly 25 percent since Trump took office.
