I don’t know if family size is a “protected class” in Texas, but I doubt it.
The company in question appears to be ImageNet Consulting, based in Oklahoma but with a branch in Austin.
Attemping to earn anything above 1/4 of poverty wages will get you docked just the same on SSI/SSDI. It’s tough but it’s quintessential American values.
Don’t you think there’s something more fundamental to consider here, more primal than economic/labor theory blah blah?
That is: The abuse of power, and the perception of abuse of power.
At any given time, some people are in trouble, in physical or emotional pain, have experienced recent trauma, might be suicidal, might even be homicidal.
Will it be less so under current circumstances?
Such individuals won’t give the remotest flying fuck about employers’ legal rights or whatever. If they perceive that an employer/boss is exploiting this emergency situation to pig-fuck them over–they won’t give a shit about some theory or some limp excuse the employer drools out.
So, were I such an employer, I’d worry about someone putting an axe thru my head.
Seriously. Now is not the time to be perceived as exploiting a position of power to fuck over working people.
The directive is:
Don’t fuck over desperate workers with little to lose who might retaliate by slamming an axe thru your fucking head.
–John Maynard Keynes
Good find, eh.
Pat Russell gave this interview a year ago (19 February 2019):
What a fucking asshole.
Arguably this is NOT a reduction in pay - it’s docking your pay for money that will be treated as an advance on your tax refund (if I understand how it’s expected to work).
Since the amount of the stimulus varies by your income and your family size, you are losing more money by having 4 kids than the fellow next to you who has 1.
If the company can’t afford to pay you for your work, they need to reduce hours. Why should the company benefit by essentially getting “free” work out of their workers?
Oops! It seems this company has now thought this over a little more carefully. The above-linked article (dated March 29) contains this link to a follow-up article (dated March 30):
Update: ImageNet Abandons Plan To Pocket Employee Stimulus Payments
Somewhere there’s a dude wearing a cape and top hat twirling his mustache after having just tied a woman to the railroad tracks thinking to himself, “ImageNet Consulting has taken things too far!”
i.e. they got caught.
No, you don’t understand. This has nothing to do with taxes at all. None. Zip. Zero.
The only thing that comes into play is income where if you make over $75k they start cutting it back.
You might be confused given that they are estimating the amount you get based on your 2020 income. Which, obviously, they generally can’t tell yet. So, come tax time next year, there will be a correction, if needed, if your income is less than they guessed, etc.
Another thought: how would they even know if you qualify for the stimulus? Maybe you are married and your spouse makes enough to put you over the limit? It’s not like your employer has access to your tax returns.
I don’t think it was addressed in this thread but shelter-in-place and other aspects of this are expensive. I might eventually eat all my pasta and soup, use my soap and toiletries, but I had to pay for them in March. I went way over March 2019 budget. I had to buy extra of this and use more of that. I had to get supplies for my kid’s homeschooling and other novel expenditures. Yeah we’re not going out to eat or the movies and saving money that way, but part of the reason this money is being sent out was that it costs a lot to follow best practices. I can’t comparison shop or double coupon day. I can’t safely go to three stores on successive days to get better deals. A check helps, not a lot and not enough for everyone, take the edge off.