a while back a local GOP congressman said $200k was middle class and partly because of that he only lasted 1 term.
I dunno - I make over $100k and thought it was going to be pretty stupid if I were sent a check. So I’m glad there is SOME cut-off. IMO, it would have been better if it were tied to unemployment or something.
Of course - as usual - there is no cut-off for welfare if you are a corporation! 
It’s good that she’s advocating this, but it’s not her invention. Basic income advocates have been saying this for years (decades, really).
We pay a huge cost in having means testing for every separate social program. Not just administrative, but because the testing is so often badly designed, arbitrary cutoffs and thresholds create perverse incentives (i.e., you don’t want to make more money because then you’ll be cut off from the program).
You still want some method of means testing, but you only need one. And we’ve already got it: Federal taxes. They’re already designed to avoid the worst of the perverse incentives, even if lots of people don’t understand it (no, you won’t make less money by being pushed into a higher bracket).
So yes, just send everyone a check and sort out the tax brackets to compensate. You avoid a great administrative cost, no one is annoyed that their neighbor got a check but they didn’t, no one is incentivized to avoid work, and the costs are spread out over a year so they’re barely noticeable anyway.
The problem with this approach is that most Democrats don’t like it because evil billionaires are getting checks, and Republicans don’t like it because well-paid liberal coastal elites are getting checks.
Actually the mechanism they are using *is *to on-paper create a credit for tax year 2020 of 1,200 for everyone in the indicated adjusted income group regardless of tax liability, and then issue everyone an advance on that.
Yes, I had to actually read that part , for, reasons.
So let’s say I make less than $75K in 2020, then will I get the $1200 credit next year?
Just answered my own question by looking up the text of the bill. In section 2201 it says this is a credit for tax year 2020 and it looks like that amount would be adjusted by the advance.
But can someone please translate this section for me?
My best translation is that if you owe the IRS money for your filed 2019 tax return but haven’t actually paid it yet, your advance goes to pay it off. Is that even remotely close?
FYI: paragraph (5) refers to substituting ‘2018’ for ‘2019’ if a person has not filed their 2019 tax return.
I think it just means that the credit can’t be counted as 2020 income, since it is now technically treated as a refund of an overpayment of your 2019 taxes. (“Chapter 1” refers to “Normal taxes and subtaxes” in the Internal Revenue Code (Chapter 26, United States Code).)
What is the 2018 income threshhold before they phase out corporate stimulus?
This is laughable. I live in West LA and there is no way that a 235K income and its lifestyle isnt way higher than yours. He is just wasting his money on luxury items like restaurants, great neighborhoods or high end gyms. Many people in LA live on less than 55K.
This kind of class warfare has no place in America!! We need to get back to the issues that really matter, like welfare queens buying steak with food stamps!
My wife and I live in Los Angeles, and we make collectively about $45K/yr now. I guess I now understand why a lot of Democrats on this board don’t support Bernie.
Is there any reasoning other than political pandering behind giving cash to people who haven’t experienced a financial hit because of this COVID19? For example, a singled working person earning $60k? Or a retired couple on a fixed income of $70k?
It’s simple and quick. The more means testing you do, the longer it takes and the more people fall through the cracks. Millions of people never get the EITC they’re owed because the process to get it is so complicated (starting with our ridiculous tax return system).
If some income bracket gets “too much” aid, it’s easier (logistically, I mean, not politically) to just tax it back at some later point.
Right. The reason I had to read it was because in the course of my duties for days I’ve been fielding messages from people saying, “look, but for [ME/MY BUSINESS], who are [insert complex business or personal circumstances here], do I get the [whatever of the different benefits], how and when?” Which involves having to make them acknowledge that I’m not their or even A tax lawyer or accountant, and that they really, really need to ask theirs to read the regulation when it comes out.
So for something like the personal incentive the flat “here’s 1200, and it’s up to a hard cutoff based on income either from your tax return or your Social Security record”, makes it simpler than to try and fine-comb every possible income circumstance. (The one thing they HAVE announced is that if you’re in arrears for Child Support, and the state has reported you to the IRS for it, that they will dock you for)
Even then hard cutoffs can cause issues of people left in limbo – for instance the $500 dependent child payment is based on the definition of “child” for the CTC, so it’s only for those under 17. So I get the messages… “but wait, I still claim my 19 y/o college student as a dependent and she does not get to file her own return!” Well, that’s for sure a problem, ma’am.
That is the intent of it. It is to be treated as a 2020 credit for a refund from the return you would have filed this April – Tax Year 2019 for most of us – and not be taxed again.
That they can’t *legally *call it “here is a free cash gift for every citizen or permanent legal resident with a Social Security Number” (basically because there is no Free Gifts To Give Away account in the Treasury, but there ARE tax credit and refund and benefit advance accounts) leads to the convoluted taxlawyerese.
Treating it as an advance payment is the same way that the Earned Income Credit or Additional Child Tax credit are able to refund you money when you owe no taxes. That’s why they are located in the “Payments” section of the return (or at least the pre-2018 return - even if I do taxes all day, I still don’t have a great grasp of what a 2018 or 2019 1040 really looks like because they changed it so much and it doesn’t really matter). This is simply the nomenclature used for refundable credits in the tax law.
And yes, that allows them to give it away without it being taxable income, since the government simply decides that you legally gave them money that you actually didn’t, and they are simply returning it.
Kind of related but not really. I was just notified that despite the Colorado national board certified teachers being promised their annual stipend back in December, we may (probably) won’t get it this year because of the financial hardships the state is having.
I count myself lucky that I have a job but today that I got my stimulus payment of $63.55 and with this news on top of it I feel like the world is telling me, “We’re going to help out everyone except you.” 