The Treasury Department Releases Its Formula for Second Round Distribution of CARES Act Funds to Tribes

WASHINGTON — A month and a half after a deadline set by Congress, the Treasury Department on Friday announced their second distribution formula for the remaining 40 percent of the $ billion allocated for tribes in the CARES Act funds.

This is the second round of  distribution by the Treasury Department to tribes. The first round was distributed during the first week of May.

Of the $8 billion allocated to tribal governments, 30 percent will be based on employment data and 10 percent will be based on expenditure data. 

Allocation Formula 

Employment

The allocation based on employment data will result from Treasury taking the following steps:

• Step 1. By tribe, sum reported tribal employment and tribal entity employment for each quarter of 2019 from their IRS Form 941.
• Step 2. Calculate the non-zero annual average of the summed quarters one through four obtained in Step 1.
• Step 3. Calculate the pro-rata payment for each tribal government, based on the annual employment averages obtained in step 2.

Expenditures

The allocation based will result from Treasury calculating the pro-rata payment for each tribal government, based on 2019 tribal total government expenditures.

Reserved Funds

Because there was so much objections raised by tribes in the first round of distribution over Treasury’s formula that used HUD Indian Housing Block Grant information, the Treasury Department is reserving $679 million from amounts that would otherwise be paid to tribal governments.

This represents an estimate of the difference in total payment amounts to Tribal governments if the Treasury Department had made population-based payments based on tribal enrollment data provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, rather than the Census-based HUD data. These funds will be used to resolve these issues that are pending in litigation in lawsuits brought by tribes.