The US Treasury Department will automatically create Trump Accounts for up to 60 million eligible children in the United States. The automatic enrollment will begin on October 1, 2026, under new temporary regulations issued by the Treasury Department.
Under the new system, the government will create accounts for eligible children without requiring a parent or guardian to complete a separate enrollment process in most cases. The government also expects automatic enrollment to make the accounts more attractive to people and organizations that want to contribute money to children’s accounts. Trump Accounts are tax-deferred investment accounts created under President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill tax and spending law. Public comments later showed strong support for automatically enrolling eligible children using information already available to the government. Some commenters warned that requiring parents or another adult to actively opt in could reduce participation.
The Treasury Department expects automatic enrollment to add about 2 million more Trump Accounts for each birth-year group of eligible children. US citizens born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, are eligible for a $1,000 contribution from the federal government to their Trump Account. The $1,000 payment is a government seed contribution, meaning the money is put into the child’s account to help start the investment account. Children born outside the 2025-2028 birth window can still have Trump Accounts if they are under 18 years old and otherwise meet the requirements. However, children born outside that four-year window will not receive the government’s $1,000 seed contribution. Michael and Susan Dell previously pledged $6.25 billion for Trump Accounts belonging to children born between 2016 and 2024 who live in ZIP codes where the household median income is below $150,000, according to CBS News. More than 50 companies have also offered to contribute to Trump Accounts for children of their employees.
Because of administrative challenges, according to the Treasury, when the Trump Accounts first launched, the government did not offer broad automatic enrollment.
The Treasury said some potential donors prefer their contributions to reach all eligible children, rather than only children whose parents know about the program and actively sign up. Automatic enrollment could increase the value of group or class contributions by billions of dollars each year, with the money spread across Trump Accounts belonging to tens of millions of children, according to the Treasury notice. The Treasury Department said this in its fact sheet on the program. The Treasury said the new system will remove the need for most individuals to personally create an account for their children. The Treasury said commenters supported using information from tax returns, Social Security Administration records and other government records to identify eligible children.
