[MysticLlama]

Not sure if this should be a new thread, maybe it'd be a spinoff...

How would you have done the stimulus/pandemic response checks?

My idea, given things that already exist in the tech systems, etc.:

For people making under $200k in 2019 (arbitrary starting point):

Send an advance on 2020 tax refund of a much larger $ amount. Say $1k per $10k of income in 2019, capped at $10k.

Then when 2020 taxes are filed give a credit indexed to to the gap in income between 2019 and 2020.

For instance:
2019 income of $100k.
$10k check
2020 income of $50k
$5k tax credit

This would accomplish a few things.
Getting cash into the economy ASAP
Retuning money that was unneeded to the treasury
Systems already mostly in place
IRS as the collection agency



We got a deposit, of which we didn't really need. Lost some wages over the year due to some hour cuts, but those were mostly made up by state + fed partial unemployment.

Would have been much better to properly allocate that money to someone that legitimately can't pay their bills.


This might have also been able to prune down the PPP. I know a couple people that had their business saved because of it, but a few more that didn't have any business impact and basically just banked a bunch of $$. Not efficient.