Which agencies had the most improper payments in 2025?

Federal data · data as of 2026-09-29 · answered from public records, not written by AI

Top 10 by improper payments in FY2025. Leading: Department of Health and Human Services ($98.34B); Department of the Treasury ($28.06B); Department of Agriculture ($13.43B).

AgencyImproper payments
Department of Health and Human Services$98.34B
Department of the Treasury$28.06B
Department of Agriculture$13.43B
Small Business Administration$12.51B
Social Security Administration$11.28B
Department of Housing and Urban Development$5.83B
Department of Labor$5.71B
Department of Veterans Affairs$3.92B
Department of Transportation$2.40B
Department of Defense$2.11B

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How to read this
  • Improper payments are agencies' own estimates from samples (PaymentAccuracy.gov, OMB, under the Payment Integrity Information Act): payments that should not have been made or were the wrong amount, plus unknown payments the agency couldn't show were proper. They are not all losses (underpayments and documentation gaps count) and not fraud as such; only risk-susceptible programs are measured.
  • Years are the fiscal year of the report; each estimate usually samples payments from an earlier 12 months. Programs join and leave the list, so totals across years compare different sets of programs.

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Which agencies had the most improper payments in 2025? · SpendQuery