Every eligible child under 18 with a valid Social Security number now has a Trump Account (530A), the Treasury Department announced on Oct 1, 2026. Treasury says automatic enrollment gave more than 60 million more children "an account ready to be claimed" – and claiming it falls to a parent or guardian, through the official Trump Accounts app.
The account exists whether or not anyone in the family has acted. What it can do depends on the claim: per Treasury, a parent or guardian must claim the account to manage it and to let family members, friends and employers contribute, and an eligible child's account must be claimed to receive the one-time $1,000 seed.
Who now has an account
Per Treasury's announcement, automatic enrollment covers every eligible child under 18 with a valid Social Security number. The temporary regulations Treasury and the IRS published on Sep 30 describe the same group in more detail: children who have not turned 18 before the end of the calendar year, have a Social Security number and had no account opened through an earlier election. Our reporting on those regulations covers the rules in full.
The regulations also say Treasury will make "subsequent periodic elections" to open accounts for children as they become eligible – a baby born next month, for example – so automatic enrollment is meant to be ongoing rather than a one-day event.
How to claim the account
Per Treasury, claiming starts with downloading the official Trump Accounts app, available for iOS and Android. During the claim, the parent or guardian:
verifies their own identity and their relationship to the child
reviews the child's information
accepts the account terms
The regulations explain why the checks are stricter than they were for Form 4547: the existence of a child's account is itself protected tax information, so the identity and authority checks for a claim are "more extensive than what is required by Form 4547." If more than one person claims the same child's account, the regulations say the first person to activate it becomes the account's responsible party.
Treasury's release does not set a deadline to claim, and it does not say whether Treasury plans to send families a letter or email saying an account is waiting.
What a claim unlocks
Before it is claimed, an automatically opened account can hold only two kinds of money, per the regulations: gifts a government or a 501(c)(3) charity funds for a whole class of children, and the $1,000 pilot contribution where a pilot program election has been made – but Treasury's Oct 1 release says an eligible child's account must be claimed to receive the seed. Treasury framed automatic enrollment as "creating a pathway for philanthropic contributions," which matches that first category – announced donor gifts each carry their own terms, and the regulations do not say how any particular gift will be delivered.
Everything else waits on the claim. Contributions from parents and grandparents, money from an employer program and the $1,000 seed for children born 2025-2028 all need the account claimed first, per Treasury. Our explainer on what it means to activate a Trump Account walks through that step.
If you already filed Form 4547
It is easy to get confused about where an earlier filing leaves a family. Per the regulations, an account that was opened and activated on or before Sep 30 is not an automatically enrolled account, so nothing about it changes. A family that filed Form 4547 but never finished activation is in a different spot: any initial account established after automatic enrollment began counts as an automatically enrolled account, whenever the election was made – and adding family money means claiming it.
Treasury's Oct 1 release does not mention Form 4547. As of Oct 1, the IRS Trump Accounts page still offers the form through an IRS online account.
What we are still waiting to learn
Treasury has not yet said which trustee holds automatically enrolled accounts before they are claimed or when the $1,000 seed will reach accounts claimed this month. We will update our coverage as Treasury and the IRS publish more. For now, TrumpAccounts.gov is the official source Treasury points families to.
Once an account is claimed, programs that may add money each carry their own conditions – the Match and Bonus Finder takes a child's age, state and ZIP code and shows which ones may apply.