Congress is considering removing the SNAP QC tolerance threshold, which excludes small errors (currently $58 or less) from a state's payment error rate (PER). Beginning in FY28, states with error rates exceeding 6%, 8%, and 10% will need to cover 5%, 10%, and 15% of benefits issued, respectively. These analyses use the most recent available data (FY23 and FY24) to project the potential impact of removing the tolerance threshold in terms of those cost shares. Base rates are from FY24, which reflect official error numbers, and the estimated change due to removing the threshold is computed using public QC data (FY23). To assess stability over time in how these changes would affect error rates, we ran the same analysis on FY22 data and found that the correlation between the two years was 0.81 and that 24 of the 25 states whose cost shares went up based on FY23 estimates would have been equally affected by using FY22 data. Rates from public QC data are lower than official estimates because they exclude cases that were found to be ineligible, which tend to have a very high average error amount and should have minimal effect on these estimates. Data sources below.

Current Policy: Official FY2024 Error Rate

QC Threshold: Calculated FY2023 Error Rates using QC data using the FY2023 threshold of $54

QC Zero: Calculated FY2023 Error Rates using QC data using an error threshold of $0

QC Method Rate Change: QC Zero - QC Threshold

Proposed Policy: Current Policy + QC Method Rate Change