Details on latest stimulus checks??

[Blackshirts_Win_'ships]

Not complaining about the complexity just saying adding to the complexity with a liquid net assets piece would complicate it a lot. Its an interesting conversation to add that to annual filings but I'm not sure it would actually improve things overall.

I don't really disagree...just make it a true stimulus. Lift all boats. That makes it inherently regressive (though not in nearly as negative a way as a flat tax system), but that's fine if it helps some people eat or some people build a deck. So many people need more (individuals and businesses), that it feels a bit gross to debate over the current plan.

 

[hothouse_corn]

If means testing, do it on the back end, not the front end...gravely defeats the supposed purpose of all this.

If you're going to call it a stimulus, it doesn't make sense to means test in the first place. Also, if you decide you just can't give people above a certain level of income a small added amount of buying power, if you take it back later on, you still get the positive of the stimulus and take money back out when, theoretically, the economy can better handle it, not in the late stages of a pandemic. Quite literally the purpose of taxes (in our system)...take money out of circulation to avoid out of control inflation (an issue that is vastly overstated anyhow, but that's a conversation for another day).

Even as a safety net (arguably what should be the priority right now), means testing often ends up as a net bad because the world is complicated.

I'm not sure if I read this half asleep and agreed, or rather had nearly this exact thought independently. Would it be easy enough to give most people a check, but have it considered as a special type of taxable income for the current year for those that would be above some threshold?

Poors and people hit hard by the past year wouldn't need to worry about doing anything new, and could keep it. Those that are banking big bucks (and probably paying Jim for his services) would just pay it back come tax season. Those in the middle would be somewhere between that. I'm spitballing here.

And, I agree about the means testing part. The only reason I think I had the same thoughts independently is because I don't think I'm smart enough to have thought of calling it a means test.

If you file joint what you/her make individually is irrelevant.

True, but if we weren't married it is a good example of how weird all of these policies and stimuli are working out in practice for other people. I'll enjoy the fact that she gets the full checks, bemoan the fact that I don't.