SNAP benefits will soon be tied to error rates. These states are in the biggest trouble

(NEXSTAR) – States have been put on notice: Stop making so many mistakes, or lose funding for food assistance.

Starting with the 2028 fiscal year, states with an error rate of higher than 6% will start losing federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. If the reform were to take effect immediately, only eight states would make the cut and receive full funding.

If a state is unable to get its error rate below the 6% threshold in time, it will need to cover between 5% and 15% of the cost of SNAP benefits. Those with higher error rates generally must pay more, but state with especially high mistake rates will have as late as 2030 to comply.

As a result of the cost shift, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that some states will end up reducing or eliminating SNAP benefits for about 300,000 people. Subsidies through child nutrition programs could also decrease for about 96,000 children.

"Even states that are going to try to do their best are going to face really difficult choices. And unless this is undone, it really is the end — and I’m not being dramatic, it’s a reality — of SNAP as we know it," Gina Plata-Nino, interim director for SNAP at the nonprofit Food Research and Action Center, told the New York Times.

The state with the largest gap to close by far is Alaska, where the error rate was most recently logged at 25%. Believe it or not, it's a big improvement from the state's 60% error rate the year before.

The state's error rate is so high, the Department of Health said, because it has been prioritizing keeping food assistance going, even when some documentation was missing. "While this approach helped protect access to food assistance, it increased the risk of procedural and administrative errors," spokesperson Megan Darrow told Anchorage Daily News.

Other states with relatively high error rates include Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon. They make mistakes in 14% to 16% of cases.

The error rates include both overpayments and underpayments – though over payments are more common.

The only states who met the 6% threshold in the 2024 fiscal year (the most recent year of available data) were Idaho, Nebraska, Nevada, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Wisconsin and Wyoming.

SNAP, formerly called the Food Stamp Program, provides food assistance to an estimated 42 million people nationwide. That's about 1 in every 8 people.