If you've tried to open a Trump Account for your child online and hit a wall asking you to verify your identity through ID.me, you're not alone — and you're not out of options.
What is ID.me, and why does it stop people?
ID.me is a private identity verification company the government uses for both online paths to opening a Trump Account — trumpaccounts.gov and your IRS Online Account. To use it, you generally need a current passport or driver's license, a smartphone or webcam, and a live selfie so their system can match your face to your ID photo.
That's a real barrier for a lot of people — not because they're doing anything wrong, but because of things entirely outside their control: an ID that's expired and hasn't been renewed, no smartphone or a broken camera, rural internet too unreliable for live video verification, or — for a documented number of veterans — accounts that get flagged or locked out entirely due to how VA records interact with the system.
It's also worth knowing what you'd be handing over. This isn't just an inconvenience question — it's a documented privacy one. In 2022, a bipartisan Congressional investigation examined ID.me's data and facial recognition practices. The ACLU has raised concerns about the volume of what ID.me collects: face and voice biometric data, government ID documents, Social Security numbers, and — for some verification types — records pulled from telecom, credit, and financial institutions. Video verification calls are recorded and stored, with no current option for users to request deletion. As recently as this year, reporting has covered a proposal that would let the IRS's use of ID.me retain biometric scans for up to three years after an account is closed, specifically to build a longer-term fraud database.
Sources: House Oversight Committee investigation (2022) · ACLU, "Three Key Problems with the Government's Use of a Flawed Facial Recognition Service" · Biometric Update, May 2026 reporting on proposed IRS/ID.me data retention
None of that is required to open a Trump Account. It's only required for the online path.
The paper form doesn't ask for any of that
Form 4547 itself doesn't ask for a photo ID anywhere on it. No ID.me, no selfie, no smartphone. Just your information and a handwritten signature.
An important distinction we want you to understand before you rely on this: avoiding ID.me on the form itself gets your child enrolled — it doesn't mean you'll never deal with ID.me at all. Activating the account later, to actually access or manage it through the Trump Accounts app or trumpaccount.com, appears to use the same ID.me-verified login as the online filing paths. That's a real, separate step, at a later date. What mailing the form gives you is the ability to secure your child's spot and eligibility for the $1,000 right now — even if you can't get through ID.me today, or ever wanted to try. Activation is a hurdle you can face later, on your own timeline, separate from the filing deadline pressure. We're not going to pretend paper filing makes the whole process ID.me-free forever — only that it removes ID.me as a barrier to applying in the first place.
Sources: Instructions for Form 4547 (Rev. 12/2025), "Authorized Individual" · U.S. Treasury, "Treasury Announces the Launch of the Trump Accounts App" · reporting on Trump Account activation and login from CNBC, Squire Patton Boggs, and Canby Financial Advisors
But the paper form has its own problems. It's dense. The fields aren't clearly labeled for a first-time reader. There's a required authorization checkbox that's easy to miss entirely, an address question that trips people up if their child doesn't live with them, and a signature requirement that has to be exactly right — because everything on this form is signed under penalty of perjury. Getting a box wrong isn't a small mistake on something like this.
What we built this for
That's the actual problem form4547assistant.com solves: a plain-language walkthrough that checks your eligibility first, catches the specific spots people get wrong, and hands you a worksheet mapped line-by-line to the real form's own numbering — so by the time you sit down with the actual paper form, you already know exactly what goes where.
No ID.me at the filing step. Just the form, done right — and an honest heads-up about what still happens after.
Veteran? ID.me has caused documented problems at the VA too — read more here.
Ready to get started?
Check your eligibility and get your worksheet for $7 — no ID.me, no account, no selfie.