Department of Government Efficiency chief Elon Musk, left, said he would discuss with President Donald Trump whether a portion of the financial cuts his team discovers can be refunded to taxpayers in the form of a DOGE dividend. (Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)
By Ben Zeisloft February 28, 2025 at 5:57pm
As the Department of Government Efficiency considers the idea of a “DOGE dividend” to help Americans benefit from streamlining the bureaucracy, it’s possible that only net taxpayers will receive payouts.
The DOGE dividend plan, first floated publicly by James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, would in essence be a “tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE.”
If DOGE is able to hit its objective of saving $2 trillion, then taking 20 percent of that pie and dividing $400 billion among all net taxpayers would amount to $5,000 per household.
The policy would create public buy-in to reforming the government and, in essence, refund Americans for the thievery from our bureaucratic elites.
But under the plan from Fishback, people who aren’t net taxpayers would indeed miss out on the opportunity.
According to a Tuesday analysis by Newsweek based on data from Pew Research Center, that would amount to anyone with an adjusted gross income of less than $40,000 per year, since those households usually take in more from benefits than they pay in taxes.
Fishback defended the plan by noting that it’s “different from past stimulus checks,” like those sent during the COVID lockdowns, since only taxpaying households are eligible, according to a report from NBC News.
He noted that “a lot of low-income households essentially saw transfer payments” of between 25 percent and 30 percent of their annual incomes from those stimulus checks a few years ago.
“This exclusively goes to households that are net-payers of federal income tax, and what that means is that they have a lower propensity to spend and a higher propensity to save a transfer payment like the DOGE dividend,” he observed.
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He also noted that because the payouts would come from funds already appropriated, the effect of inflation would not be as severe, relative to what some Republicans have warned.
“Tax-paying households are more likely to save (not spend) a transfer payment like the DOGE Dividend, as consumption is a lower share of their income,” Fishback explained.
“There is nothing inflationary about paying off debt, saving for emergencies, or investing in college or retirement,” he added.
“In fact, debt paydowns are actually deflationary.”
That is a rather compelling argument.
There are, of course, the dollars and cents of giving the DOGE dividends to households more likely to put them toward savings rather than consumption.
But more importantly, there is the argument of justice.
American taxpayers are learning almost daily about the vast degrees of bloat in the federal government, especially bloat that is driven by leftist ideologues, and they will want their money back.
That’s why the plan does not need to involve people who don’t pay taxes. They were not wronged.
The DOGE dividend, in some sense, will just be nabbing cash stolen by a burglar and returning it to the homeowners from whom he stole.
Our country has indeed been robbed blind.
But now that the truth is coming into the light, it’s time to make some amends.
Ben Zeisloft is the editor of The Republic Sentinel, a conservative news outlet owned and operated by Christians. He is a former staff reporter for The Daily Wire and has written for The Spectator, Campus Reform, and other conservative news outlets. Ben graduated from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with concentrations in business economics and marketing.
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