Elon Musk's Proposed $5,000 DOGE Check: Do You Qualify?

Elon Musk and President Donald Trump are reportedly floating the idea of using funds saved by DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) during the latter’s federal government-wide layoffs and budget cuts to send American taxpayers a dividend check that could be worth up to $5,000.

The dividend was first proposed on X (formerly Twitter, now owned by Musk) by investment firm CEO James Fishback.

Musk embraced the idea and brought it to Trump, who said at the FII Priority Summit on Feb. 19, “There’s even under consideration a new concept where we give 20 percent of the DOGE savings to American citizens, and 20 percent goes to paying down debt, because the numbers are incredible, Elon.”

The idea is based on the promise that DOGE will achieve a supposed $2 trillion in federal funding cuts.

Twenty percent of that amount is $400 billion, which divided by 79 million taxpayers amounts to a $5,000 rebate.

Unfortunately, if the stimulus checks do come to fruition, it appears not every American citizen will receive one.

According to NBC News, low-income Americans who make under $40,000 won’t be eligible for Trump and Musk’s DOGE stimulus check. That accounts for nearly half of all Americans, including the Americans who could probably use the money most right now amid soaring grocery prices and inflation.

Unlike the COVID-19 stimulus payments the Trump administration sent out to U.S. citizens in 2020 and 2021, which were distributed to most households, the DOGE stimulus checks would only be sent to “tax-paying households.”

According to NBC News, the "rebate 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 the Pew Research Center, most Americans who have an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 pay effectively no federal income tax."

"The DOGE Dividend is different from past stimulus checks because only tax-paying households receive it. 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 writes in his official dividend proposal, per NBC News.

Still, it's unclear if the DOGE dividend will actually be fulfilled at all, or for the suggested rebate amount of $5,000.

Since Trump entered office in January for his second term, DOGE claims to have saved $55 billion in government funding cuts—a far cry from the trillions in savings previously projected.

Even Musk himself has backtracked on the projection, saying in a recent interview that the $2 trillion goal was a "best-case outcome" and that there was only a "good shot" at reaching half that amount.

Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Musk, Trump's top re-election campaign donor who donated a whopping $288 million to the president, warned that the former reality TV star's second term would likely spell "temporary [economic] hardship" for everyday Americans.