Should taxpayers be waiting on $5,000 dividend checks from DOGE or will it be less?
Here’s what Elon Musk said and an update on what to know about the status of the refund and whether you make enough income to qualify to receive it.
During a rally in Wisconsin on Sunday, special government employee Musk was asked about the infamous DOGE dividend check for Americans, to which he responded that it was up to the president and congressional approval to decide if and when his cost saving measures would result in “whether a check is cut or not” to taxpayers.
“As government spending is made more efficient and spending is reduced, the tax by inflation is reduced,” said Musk at the rally. “So one way or another, you will effectively be better off if resources in the United States are not wasted.” Adding, “We’ve made a lot of progress but there’s still a tremendous amount of work to do,” Musk continued.
President Donald Trump said he would consider the plan to pay out $5,000 stimulus checks to taxpayers in the form of a ‘DOGE dividend’ back in February. He explained it as using part of the 20% of the savings identified by Musk‘s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and giving it back to taxpayers.
The idea was originally floated by Azoria investment firm CEO James Fishback on Musk’s social media platform X, suggesting Trump and Musk “should announce a ‘DOGE Dividend’ — a tax refund check sent to every taxpayer, funded exclusively with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE.” Musk replied “Will check with the President.“
In an interview with FOX News Bret Baier, Musk and the DOGE team discussed the timeline to reduce the deficit by $1 trillion through cutting wasteful government spending and eliminating fraud. DOGE claimed to have saved approximately $130 billion at that time, estimating that savings to be over $800 per taxpayer.
In a more recent interview with NewsNation, Fishback said he was “optimistic a bill is forthcoming to put President Trump’s vision for DOGE coming full circle into law.” Adding, “It isn’t just enough … to identify waste, fraud and abuse. We have to refund the taxpayer their hard-earned money when their money was wasted and misused, and that’s what the DOGE dividend calls for.”
Fishback described meetings with lawmakers in the House and Senate as “very productive” and said a plan may be revealed soon.
Trump has not shared any further specifics or details about the possible ‘DOGE dividend‘ or its certainty.
Fishback’s four-page proposal of the ‘DOGE dividend’ described it as a refund “sent only to tax-paying householders.” Noting the difference from past stimulus checks, he added that DOGE checks would not be inflationary as they would be “exclusively funded with DOGE-driven savings, unlike COVID stimulus checks which were deficit-financed.”
Fishback’s proposal would send dividends only to households above a certain income level as opposed to pandemic-era checks that were sent “indiscriminately.”
“A lot of low-income households essentially saw transfer payments of 25 to 30% of their annual … income,” Fishback said of the pandemic stimulus checks, adding, “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.”
“I’m honored to have the president’s support, but the plan is very simple,” Fishback said. “DOGE is going to save X amount of money over the next couple of years. Let’s take 20 percent of that and send it right back to the hard-working taxpayers who sent it to D.C. in the first place.”
By definition, a dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders and refund is a payment made back to a user that previously paid for something. A stimulus check on the other hand, is a direct payment to encourage spending and stimulate the economy by putting money directly into the consumers’ hand.
Do I qualify for DOGE check?
The potential refund would be sent only to households that are net-income taxpayers — people who pay more in taxes than they get back — with lower-income Americans not qualifying for the return, according to news reports. The Pew Research Center cites most Americans who have an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 pay effectively no federal income tax.
The proposed DOGE refund check would be issued per household, rather than to each individual taxpayer, including those receiving Social Security benefits that meet the income tax requirements.
What is DOGE?
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), officially the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization, is an initiative created by Trump and spearheaded by special government employee Musk.
The mission of DOGE was to slash federal spending, deregulation and “modernize federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
At the time it was introduced, DOGE’s effort was to save as much as $2 trillion a year. DOGE claims to have already saved $140 billion.
Maria Francis is a Pennsylvania-based journalist with the Mid-Atlantic Connect Team.
