The Treasury Access Symbols, when left blank, made it nearly impossible to trace the payments. The Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) discovered an identification code linking U.S. Treasury payments to a budget line item, which accounts for nearly $4.7 trillion in payments that were often left blank.
“The Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) is an identification code linking a Treasury payment to a budget line item,” DOGE wrote in a post on X. “In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible. As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going.”
The agency thanked the U.S. Treasury for their work in identifying the optional field. According to the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, which is under the Treasury, TAS codes are used to describe any account identification codes assigned by the Treasury and are also referred to as the “account.”
The discovery was announced on the same day DOGE appeared to have populated the DOGE.gov Savings page, which, as of Monday evening, reported total estimated savings of about $55 billion. These savings include fraud detection, contract cancellations, asset sales, workforce reductions, and regulatory changes.