On Monday, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) announced that nearly $4.7 trillion in payments was missing from the Treasury Department, a crucial tracking code, making the transactions “almost impossible” to trace.

According to DOGE, the transactions allegedly lacked the Treasury Account Symbol (TAS), an identification code connecting a Treasury payment to a specific budget line item. DOGE described the usefulness of this code as a “standard financial process.”

“In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible,” an X post from DOGE read.

Elon Musk's project to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government announced that, following the recent discovery, the TAS code is now compulsory.

“As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going,” DOGE thanked the Treasury Department for its “great work” in implementing the change.

Musk described the update as a “major improvement in Treasury payment integrity.”

Acknowledging the combined effort, he tweeted, “This was a combined effort of [DOGE, Treasury and the Federal Reserve]. Nice work by all.”

The Treasury Department, responsible for handling trillions of dollars in government payments yearly, was among the first agencies where DOGE established a presence following President Trump’s inauguration.

To help identify and eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, DOGE staffers at Treasury were given access to the department’s highly sensitive payment systems.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discussed DOGE in a Bloomberg TV interview last week, emphasising, “This is not some roving band … This is methodical, and it is going to yield big savings.”

DOGE recently suggested “deleting paper checks” at the Treasury, claiming it could save taxpayers “at least $750 million per year.”

The initiative pointed out that the Treasury Department must maintain “a physical lockbox” to handle over 100 million checks it processes annually, costing about $2.40 per check to manage.

According to DOGE, approximately $25 billion in tax refunds were delayed or lost in fiscal year 2023 because of returned or expired checks.