Um, how isn’t this a thing already? (Millionaire=people who earn $1M yearly)
Sorry for Fox News, but it’s the best source with this headline and it says it’s bipartisan so we should probably be good.
This is a BS title.
The bill prevents people with more than $1mil income from receiving unemployment. Far more reasonable considering everything I see says that you need a million or two to retire comfortably these days.
Someone in their 50s could easily have $1M in assets if their house appreciated a lot since they bought it and they gave a decent retirement account. Yet they could have been earning $50k a year and have no liquid assets.
Exactly.
I wonder if you could contest this under the claim that you disagree with the valuation of your assets.
Say your child made a finger painting that you hung on the fridge. Some kind of crazed, but highly respected/influential, art appraiser sees it on a visit and claims it’s worth $10,000,000. So you can’t have any communal benefits unless you sell it (but you don’t want to, because it’s your kid’s - not to mention actually selling it can be hard). Would there be no avenue to claim that the appraiser is an idiot, and it’s barely worth the paper it’s on?
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Is this actually anything anyone in this income bracket has ever done? This seems like a pointless bill to me
“IRS data shows thousands of millionaires are gaming this system to receive unemployment insurance,” [Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis] said.
Would just like to pop in here and say that terms like “millionaires” and “billionaires” typically refer to net worth/wealth, not income. This is why Jeff Bezos was able to claim some of the federal COVID aide because, despite being a multi-billionaire, his income in that year was below the threshold (I think it was sub-$100k) as income from investments didn’t qualify under the structure of the plan.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment of people whose net worths are upwards of a million being able to claim unemployment, actually calculating net worth is extremely difficult to do, especially among the wealthy. That would put an unreasonable burden on the unemployment benefit system that would probably end up costing more in administrative costs than the money saved by not including to the ultra-wealthy in the benefit. Preventing the latter is the main benefit of universal programs
actually calculating net worth is extremely difficult to do, especially among the wealthy.
Even among the non-wealthy. For example, you might have some guy who has essentially no savings but who worked for an auto manufacturer and has a pension coming, compared to another guy who has a million dollars in his 401K but the annual income from that would be less than the first guy’s pension.
In the 90s, I didn’t qualify for food stamps. I had a minimum wage job, but the house I lived in had a washer and a dryer, which meant I was too rich for food stamps.
Were* those literally criteria that were used?
Yes.
That’s bonkers. I’m sorry you had to endure that.
That’s Indiana for you. And I survived despite it, so it all worked out, but thanks.
Not exactly related, I was a college kid looking to move out of my parents’ house back in 2007. I applied for Section 8 housing as my minimum wage job at the time technically met all the qualifications for it. I wasn’t allowed to receive it because I was in school at the time. You can’t be poor and go to college at the same time if you wanted a place to live, apparently.
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And then how do you enforce that without calculating net worth? Just let people self-report with no verification?
I don’t think it necessarily needs active enforcement. It can be as simple as:
Richy Rich: “So I claimed unemployment during my taxes, and no one stopped me! Bwa ha ha!”
Moralistic Auditor: “Wait…you did?? That’s illegal! Screw it, I always hated you, I’m going to report you to the IRS!”
IRS: “We’ve discovered you incorrectly claimed unemployment, thanks to an anonymous tip and brief investigation. Your punitive taxes have been quintupled.”You wouldn’t always catch everyone; that’s fine, as long as the cost of abusers is not outweighed by the savings of not verifying everyone.
Main problem with this is that unemployment isn’t handled by the IRS, it’s a program under the Department of Labor and administered by the States and federal agencies notoriously don’t talk to each other.
There’s also nothing wrong with just giving them unemployment benefits, but you structure your tax system so that the rich people, when they end up needing to claim unemployment, are paying more or equivalent in taxes paying into unemployment than they’re getting in the payout. You simplify both sets of laws, the IRS is in charge of collecting revenue and the subdepartment of Labor tasked with this only has to worry about dishing out your cash so the administration of the benefit is simplified, and you still get your desired result of exceedingly well off people not “dragging” the system
Honestly, after a day to mull it over, I’m concerned that it could be used to make the argument that they shouldn’t have to pay into it.
You think these people are paying their fair share of taxes?
Why should someone pay into employment insurance if they won’t get employment insurance?
It’s capped, it’s not like they are getting copious amounts.
If you wanna tax them more tax them more other ways with an actual tax.
Remember, its not a tax. It’s insurance. They paid for it.
Edit: in Canada anyway… it’s a separate deduction from taxes, specifically for EI.
Edit: another way to think about it is in Canada we have the CPP (canada pension plan) which is also not a tax that comes off each cheque. It pays into our pension, and we get a set amount back when we retire based off what we put in. You can’t just say oh if you made this much you don’t get your cpp. It’s not a tax, it’s something they’ve paid into and it’s rightfully theirs.
In the US, it’s just another payroll tax, not something you can choose.
Right, you can’t choose it, but is it another line that says employment insurance? I doubt it says EI Tax.
That’s not a tax then, it’s buying into something. If you pay part of your benefits on your payroll it also isn’t a tax but comes off it.
My payroll slip actually says federal tax on the taxes.
Edit: clarity and Mandatory insurance isn’t a tax
If it’s just the name’s that different and it goes to the state, it is a state tax. The arguments for not paying it and not paying for, say, medicare are about the same.
So in Flordia, where you are required by law to have hurricane insurance if you have a mortage, is that a tax?
In Florida, hurricane insurance is required for people who own and carry a mortgage on houses or condos, including landlords, in the form of a windstorm insurance policy. The Florida legislature began requiring this policy, which is bundled into Florida homeowners, condo and landlord insurance policies at the time of purchase.
Edit: Ones for houses, the other is for employment. Both are required by the state. There’s even state offered insurance as private are fleeing the state.
Edit: Oh also, do you actually have a separate line for medicaid or medicare on your payroll slips for everyone? Our healthcare in Canada is just part of our regular taxes. There’s no line item for it.
Yes, I’d call Hurricane insurance a tax.
Yes, Medicaid is definitely a tax. I was just making an example that having a different name shouldn’t bolster the argument that you shouldn’t pay something by any means.
And the concern is giving them justification.
A bunch of attention seekers making lots of noise about a complete non-issue, while doing nothing about real corporate welfare.
It’s not a lot of noise either
notwithstanding “any other provision of law,” federal funds would be barred from being paid out “in a year to an individual whose adjusted gross income is equal to or greater than $1,000,000.”
I am surprised that in the USA you can make a million income in a year and still get payed welfare. But then again I really shouldn’t be.
Who cares if they get it? It’s peanuts for most people anyways, especially nowadays.
I wouldn’t have cared if the distribution of wealth hadn’t become so incredibly lopsided. The last thing rich people need is more money.
Plus it adds up:
“IRS data shows thousands of millionaires are gaming this system to receive unemployment insurance,” [Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis] said.
People in charge of making laws are upset when people follow the laws they pass…
?
A couple hundred dollars per week saved is a couple hundred dollars per week saved.
Something is way better than nothing in most cases.
I’m fine with them drawing on (and contributing to) unemployment insurance the same everyone else!
As am I, particularly because inflation happens and these means checks are a long-term bombshell. If the means test isn’t indexed to inflation then in 50 years you are looking at a limit that starts cutting support to people that need it.
Never means test, there’s too few rich people “abusing” the system for any means test to meaningfully reduce social program budgets.
The bill won’t prevent them from contributing to it.
This is exactly the kind of inane rule that feels good, doesn’t do any good, but needlessly complicates a system that should be simple, and only will work well for the poor if it’s simple.
It is simple. AFAIK people already report their annual income (maybe except stocks for some reason) which should determine their unemployment. That does a lot of good by saving money and annual millionaires don’t need unemployment welfare either.
What do you think the cutoff should be for a person to receive unemployment?
I’m not sure, but people earning over 1M yearly definitely shouldn’t.
What about people earning $100k?
They probably should
How much money is actually saved? And what does this do to enforcement? The IRS doesn’t issue unemployment checks, so now we need the DOL (in each state) to work with the IRS and state tax agencies to determine prior year income before sending out unemployment checks?
And for how many people? Is there actually a glut of millionaires claiming unemployment to the point where this is meaningful savings?
And is the bill indexed to inflation? 1 million dollars today won’t be the same as 1 million dollars in 2070. Are you sure congress will keep up with inflation (see: minimum wage).
This bill sounds nice, but isn’t actually solving a problem. I’d much rather millionaires and billionaires benefit from social programs than adding arbitrary tests to keep them out. Because every time we add those dumb arbitrary tests we end up with situations like medicaid where the qualifying income for “low income” doesn’t change effectively cutting out people that 20 years ago would have qualified.
And these checks all add administrative bureaucracy which almost always balloons the cost.
I can speak to this personally. I have a child with a severe disability who qualifies for the katie beckett program. Normally, my income pushes me out of qualification for medicaid, however, katie beckett allows for children with severe disabilities to enter medicaid (fantastic). To get there, however, I had to apply for medicaid twice. The first to go through the system and get denied and the second time with the denial to qualify my child for the program (nuts, I know). After that, I now have to do 6 month qualification interviews with the insurance company the state uses to administer the program and 6 month interviews with a nurse to make sure that, yes, indeed severe disabilities do not go away. Imagine all the paperwork and admin costs going into making sure I’m not abusing the system? It’s not a short process either, it took several months just to qualify.
That’s not the end of the craziness either. Once my child turns 18, they’ll qualify for social security and medicaid. However, that’s only if they have less than $2000 in assets. That limit? Set in 1970 when we allowed people with disabilities to use medicare. We didn’t want “rich” kids abusing the system so we put in a means test. Which would be approximately $15k if it were indexed to inflation, but it wasn’t. This makes it really hard for someone with a disability to function in society. They basically have to live like paupers if they also want medical care.
But hey, it saves money, so good right? /s
We have a similar problem here with welfare cheques. The amount hasn’t gone up with inflation over the years and it’s harder and harder to even live a frugal life with roommates on it now. Without other assistance you’ll probably end up homeless or go hungry.
Happened to a friend who fell on hard times.
And then once you are on it, the moment you do a tiny amount of work that earns a tiny amount of money they start clawing it back substantially. So you get a shitty job when you get back on your feet, but if they don’t give you enough hours you actually lose money, and they’ll often demand more than what your able do before clawbacks, putting you in the decision of can you even work this job as you’ll be homeless and starving if you do anyway.
Not propely increasing these social programs and/or means testing over decades is brutal.
Even without the IRS, most states already calculate unemployment benefits based on income. This shouldn’t need much bureaucracy.
“IRS data shows thousands of millionaires are gaming this system to receive unemployment insurance,” [Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis] said.
I don’t see inflation getting so bad that anyone with a million dollars every year need unemployment to survive in the next century unless a war occurs on our land or we run out of resources, by which time all laws should change drastically.
IRS data shows thousands of millionaires
There is 1.8 million of unemployed people on unemployment insurance. Thousands is a drop in the bucket. You are looking at saving, what, 0.1% of the admin cost because a couple thousand people use it that don’t need to? You are literally looking at saving around 26 million dollars per year with this measure (maximum payout is $500 per week). That’s nothing for an agency that spends over 100 billion per year.
I don’t see inflation getting so bad that anyone with a million dollars every year need unemployment to survive in the next century
At 3% inflation in 50 years, 500k will be like 100k today in 50 years. In 100 years, 2 million will be like 100k in today’s money. It does not take long for inflation to catch up. 3% is the historic average for inflation in the US.
This is an old conservative trick, don’t fall for it. If we must have means tests, they must be indexed to inflation otherwise they turn into rollbacks of social programs with time.
I get your point with inflation now (the bill’s text hasn’t been released so hopefully it does talk about inflation), but 26 million per year is 26 million per year saved. Beyond the percentages there’s also actual money.
I’m fine with laws applying equally across the board
If they are paying into it they should be able to claim it. It is capped at a pretty low amount anyway. If we say they can’t claim it they will be able to say they shouldn’t pay into it.
Seems like a pretty simple fix really. Just adjust the law to make sure passive income is accounted for instead of just salary. That seems to take care of the problem.
334 people upvoted Fox News? It’s never appropriate to link to that site.
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