You Might Not Make Enough Money To Get Musk’s Potential DOGE Dividend Check

You Might Not Make Enough Money To Get Musk’s Potential DOGE Dividend Check: Here’s the Salary Cutoff

G. Brian Davis  Mon, March 31, 2025  GOBankingRates

James Fishback, an investment manager who briefly worked with Vivek Ramaswamy in the earliest days of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), says the idea of “DOGE dividend” payments came to him in a dream.

Fishback first tweeted about it on X in February: “American taxpayers deserve a ‘DOGE Dividend’: 20% of the money that DOGE saves should be sent back to hard-working Americans as a tax refund check. It was their money in the first place!” Since then, both Elon Musk and President Donald Trump have both aired it as a possibility.

Trump is certainly no stranger to economic stimulus payments. But that doesn’t mean the DOGE dividend would work just like his COVID-19 stimulus checks.

Who Would Be Eligible?

The tax rebate would only go out to American households who pay net-positive taxes.

Low- and moderate-income households often collect more in tax credits than they pay in taxes. The Tax Foundation points out that the bottom 50% of earners in the U.S. pay roughly 3% of the total individual income taxes collected by the IRS.

A analysis by the Pew Research Center found taxpayers earning below $40,000 generally collect more back in tax credits than they pay in taxes. So, these taxpayers would not be eligible for a DOGE dividend check.

While DOGE dividend is a redistribution of wealth, as a tax rebate it would exclude lower earners.

TO READ MORE:  https://finance.yahoo.com/news/might-not-enough-money-musk-120113915.html