Key Initiatives

Improving Treasury’s Operations: Paper to Electronics

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Treasury continuously strives to reduce costs and increase efficiencies in the traditional Treasury operational business lines: payments, collections and debt management. This is accomplished in part by moving from paper to electronic transactions to the greatest extent possible. The following programs support this initiative:

• Direct Deposit of Federal Benefit Payments – Treasury continues to work to convert recipients who receive their benefit payments by check to electronic funds transfer. While 79% of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income payments are made electronically, Treasury issues almost 159 million benefit checks annually, costing taxpayers and the Social Security Trust Fund and extra $120 million each year. Go Direct is a grass roots national marketing campaign designed to motivate current check recipients to sign up for direct deposit.
  
  For information on the Go Direct marketing campaign, refer to www.godirect.org
  
  For information on other Treasury electronic payment programs, refer to www.fms.treas.gov/eft/index.html
  
  
  
• Electronic Corporate Tax Collections – Treasury launched a project to communicate to tax preparers and small businesses the benefits of paying taxes electronically through the Electronic Federal Tax Payment System (EFTPS). The goals of the Simplify campaign are to reduce usage of the paper Federal Tax Deposit (FTD) coupons; and, to inform taxpayers of the benefits and security of paying taxes electronically.
  
  For more information Simplify, refer to www.simplifyeftps.org
  
  For more information on EFTPS, refer to www.fms.treas.gov/eftps/index.html
  
  
• Debt Management – TreasuryDirect is the financial services website that lets individuals buy and redeem securities directly from the U.S. Department of the Treasury in electronic form. It offers product information across the entire line of Treasury Securities, from Series EE Savings Bonds to Treasury Bonds. The new TreasuryDirect accounts offer Treasury Bills, Notes, Bonds, Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), and Series I and EE Savings Bonds in electronic form in one convenient account.
  
  For more information, refer to www.treasurydirect.gov

Last Updated: June 21, 2006