Alabama’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payment error rate (PER) increased to 9.52% in fiscal year 2025.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) on Wednesday released each state’s PER, which measures how accurately states determine who is eligible for SNAP and how much they should receive.
States with error rates at or above the 6% threshold will be responsible for covering 5%, 10% or 15% of their states’ benefits due to a recent federal rule change.
Alabama had a 9.52% PER in fiscal year 2025, 8.82% was from overpayments and .7% from underpayments. Alabama’s PER in fiscal year 2024 was 8.32%.
State Rep. Rex Reynolds (R-Huntsville), House General Fund budget committee chairman, told 1819 News on Thursday the added cost share to the state could be as much as $137 million based on preliminary numbers he’s seen.
“We have submitted a waiver for that. There’s no way that we can go back and undo what we did in 2025,” Reynolds said. “If you’ve been to any of our budget hearings, you’ve heard myself and some of my members annually always talk about how we’re going to get this error rate down. We did provide some funding for DHR for some software that is helping now to reduce that rate. People need to understand, too, that there are outside factors there that the state can’t control. Like the timing of when the recipients file their forms. It could be a due date at the end of the month on a weekend, and we get charged with it being late because it doesn’t come in until that Monday. There are a lot of administrative things that are out of the control of DHR but still that’s a very large management sector that DHR deals with, and there is some administrative things out there that we can do better.”
Reynolds said he expects the state’s error rate to drop in future fiscal years and that the waiver Alabama applied for wouldn’t count the 2025 numbers against them.
“The software is now eliminating SNAP benefits outside of Alabama. We think that alone is going to bring the error rate down considerably because we had one fraud attempt that was coming out of like New Jersey, and it involved like $70,000. I think that new software eliminating hits from out of state will drop our error rate down,” Reynolds said.
The national PER for fiscal year 2025 was 10.62%, far surpassing the congressional threshold of 6%. Including both overpayments and underpayments, 2025’s national PER represents a collective $10.1 billion in improper payments nationwide.
“These payment error rates are further proof that state accountability is severely lacking in SNAP,” U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said in a statement. “USDA has taken historic action to help interested states curb SNAP waste, and I hope other states, regardless of political leadership, prioritize needy families and the American taxpayer over politics.”
The federal government recently added new guardrails for states’ payment error rates starting as early as October 1, 2027, implementing real financial consequences for states that mismanage taxpayer dollars.
The higher their PER, the higher the percentage states will have to partially match federal funding of SNAP. The 2025 PER is the first year that could be used to calculate those percentages.
In addition to this matching fund requirement, states with PER at or above 6% threshold are required to submit a Corrective Action Plan to USDA’s Food and Nutrition Administration detailing how they will address the root cause of their errors. Some of these states may also be liable for a separate financial penalty as part of the SNAP quality control process.
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