The Treasury is auto-opening Trump Accounts for tens of millions of children, but parents still must file IRS Form 4547 or forfeit the $1,000 federal seed money.
The Department of the Treasury has reversed course on Trump Accounts and started automatically opening them for eligible kids under 18 who have a Social Security number, a shift meant to fix weak sign-ups under the old opt-in rules.
That change does not hand families the $1,000 government pilot contribution on its own. Parents still have to submit IRS Form 4547 to elect the seed deposit, and the Treasury says it cannot make that election for them. Without the form, the money is not automatically theirs.
The U.S. Sun reported the department began the auto-opening push for tens of millions of children beginning on a recent Thursday, after the earlier requirement that families file Form 4547 just to open an account left participation far below the pool of eligible kids.
Under the new approach, the Treasury opens a Trump Account for an eligible child with no parent action needed to create the account itself. The seed deposit is a separate step.
Only babies born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028, qualify for the $1,000 federal contribution. The department has said automatic opening for eligible children under 18 with a Social Security number would run on or about October 1, 2026.
Officials estimate the shift will add more than 60 million Trump Accounts this year alone and touch 73 million children in 44 million families. About two million more accounts are expected each year after that.
The point of the U-turn was clear in the numbers. Middle- and higher-income households had been opening accounts at a much higher rate. Auto-opening is expected to help lower-income families most, the group least likely to navigate an opt-in process on their own.
As of July 30, about 5.6 million Forms 4547 had been processed. Eligible children numbered 73.37 million.
In the majority of states, processed electronic Forms 4547 sat under 10 percent of the estimated number of eligible children, per the Treasury Department. That gap is why the department moved to open accounts without waiting for parents to start the paperwork, and why the seed money warning still matters.
An auto-opened account without Form 4547 does not deliver the $1,000 pilot contribution. Families that skip the form leave that deposit on the table.
Trump Accounts are tax-deferred investment savings vehicles for children. Contributions are invested initially in a low-cost S&P 500 index fund, giving kids a direct stake in long-term market growth rather than another short-term transfer program.
The Washington Examiner reported the accounts officially launched around July Fourth after a May app rollout, with the government depositing $1,000 for eligible newborns in the 2025, 2028 birth window. Parents and others may contribute up to $5,000 a year. Employers may add up to $2,500. About 6 million accounts had opened, and 1.4 million claimed accounts were positioned for the federal seed. Major private support has followed, including a Dell pledge of $6.25 billion to add $250 for qualifying children, alongside bank and firm matches.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the accounts “the most important benefit for young people since the G.I. Bill.”
Breitbart reported the Trump Accounts app went nationwide so families could sign up, contribute, and track growth, with nearly six million children already signed up and activation emails sent in phases to households that had submitted Form 4547 ahead of the July 4, 2026 official start. Partnerships included Bank of New York Mellon and Robinhood.
Bessent said the app would make it easy for millions of Americans to sign up, contribute, and watch investments grow, and that the accounts may become one of President Donald Trump’s most enduring legacies for future generations.
Those early millions of sign-ups still left most eligible children outside the Form 4547 pipeline. That is the practical problem the Treasury’s auto-open decision tries to solve on the account side while leaving the seed election in parents’ hands.
Eligible children under 18 with a Social Security number can have an account opened without a parent filing first. The $1,000 government pilot contribution still requires the family to submit IRS Form 4547. The Treasury cannot file that election on a family’s behalf.
For babies born from the start of 2025 through the end of 2028, that form is the difference between an open account and an open account that actually receives the federal seed. For everyone else in the under-18 pool, auto-opening expands access to the investment vehicle itself, with private contributions and employer matches available under the program rules described at launch.
The weak opt-in period showed how quickly a beneficial program stalls when paperwork is the gate. Auto-opening removes one barrier. Form 4547 remains the gate for the thousand dollars.
Washington can open the accounts. Parents still have to claim the seed. Common sense says file the form before the money disappears.