How to Claim an Auto Enrolled Trump Account and Elect the $1,000 Contribution

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The Treasury Department has auto enrolled 60 million children for Trump accounts and has released guidance on how family members and guardians can claim the accounts for the newly enrolled children. With automatic enrollment complete, “every eligible child under the age of eighteen with a valid Social Security number now has a Trump Account,” Treasury stated in a recent release. Treasury used information available from tax returns, Social Security Administration records and other authorized sources to identify children who satisfied the statutory age and social security number requirements.

Over $70 million Trump accounts have now been created, counting both manual enrollment by families and auto-enrollment by Treasury. New regulations explain that there are now three types of Trump accounts: those established by private persons through the election process; auto accounts established by Treasury; and claimed auto accounts, which were established by Treasury and later claimed on behalf of a child by a family member or guardian (For earlier coverage of basic Trump account rules, read our previous article here).

Automatic enrollment does not give parents and other guardians control over a child’s Trump account. The responsible parties must formally claim the accounts under new procedures released in the temporary regulations to be able to manage them and to make family, friend and employer contributions possible.

How to Claim an Auto Enrolled Trump Account

To claim a child’s Trump Account, Treasury advises downloading the official Trump Accounts app or the claimant can use the IRS website or the official Trump Account website. The IRS has put out FAQs with links to these resources. During the claiming process, a parent or guardian will verify their identity and relationship to their child, review the child’s information and accept the account terms.

To claim the account, a person must be a guardian or legal custodian having authority under applicable law to manage the account beneficiary’s property or financial affairs. Also, account beneficiaries with legal capacity (having attained the age of majority or having been emancipated) can claim their own account. In case of custody disputes, only the legally authorized person can claim an account.

How to Elect the $1,000 Trump Account Contribution

This process permits the authorized person to control the account from then on. Importantly, eligible children must have their Trump Account claimed to receive the one-time $1,000 seed contribution from Treasury. The government contribution is for eligible U.S. citizens born from January 1, 2025, through December 31, 2028.

To request the contribution, the parent or guardian must submit Form 4547, Trump Account Election(s), and select the option for the $1,000 pilot program contribution. The form is submitted through the Trump Accounts app, the Trump Accounts website or the claimant’s IRS Individual Online Account.

Trump Account Management and Group Contributions

For auto-enrolled accounts, the IRS pools the assets into a centralized master group trust for collective investment management. The regulations establish a framework to allow large-scale, coordinated contributions from government entities and tax-exempt charitable donors to fund accounts for groups of children.

Donors cannot select individual recipients. Approved groups of children must have at least 5,000 account beneficiaries and use both geographic and birth-year criteria to determine who is included. For approved groups, the regulations provide that each child in the group must receive an equal, uniform contribution.

Conclusion

Parents and guardians who have not established a Trump account for their child should take steps to claim a child’s auto-enrollment account. Once claimed, they then should elect the $1,000 in federal seed money.

Until these steps are taken, control of the accounts will be with the Treasury Department, and no family contributions, employer matching, or investment decisions can be made for the child’s account. Registered charities (like the Dell Foundation’s ZIP-code initiative) or local government grants can deposit funds into auto-enrolled accounts even before they are claimed.