Back in February, James Fishback, founder and CEO of investment firm Azoria, proposed the idea of a “DOGE dividend” on social media. It was an idea that caught the attention of Elon Musk.
“American taxpayers deserve a ‘DOGE Dividend’: 20% the money that DOGE saves should be sent back to hard-working Americans as a tax refund check,” Fishback posted on X. “It was their money in the first place!”
He went on to say that — with $2 trillion in savings from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and 79 million tax-paying households — this payment would work out to about $5,000 per household, “with the remaining used to pay down the national debt.”
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DOGE chief Musk — who has since stepped back from the role — responded by saying he’d share the idea with President Donald Trump. The president then promoted the idea onstage at a summit on Feb. 19.
So, can you expect a DOGE dividend check any time soon?
Who would be eligible?
Fishback’s proposal assumed that DOGE would achieve up to $2 trillion in cuts — but that doesn’t appear likely. Indeed, Musk revised the savings goal a few times from $2 trillion to $1 trillion and now $150 billion for fiscal year 2026.
If, however, DOGE was able to achieve $2 trillion in cuts, Fishback says 20% — or $400 billion — could then be divided among 79 million taxpaying households. That works out to $5,000 per household.
But his DOGE dividend would only go to households above a certain income threshold (those who don’t get a tax refund). In other words, lower-income Americans may not qualify.
Many Americans who have an adjusted gross income of under $40,000 owe little or no federal income tax, “especially after factoring in the effects of refundable tax credits, such as the child and earned-income credits,” according to the Pew Research Center.
Fishback says this makes the DOGE dividend different from the stimulus checks sent out as part of the 2021 American Rescue Plan during the COVID-19 pandemic — in which, he says, checks were sent out “indiscriminately,” according to NBC News.
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It’s worth noting that a dividend isn’t the same thing as a subsidy. A dividend is a distribution of profits by a corporation to its shareholders, while a stimulus check is a payment made by a government to its citizens in order to stimulate spending and boost consumer confidence during times of economic hardship.
Coming up short
As of June 29, the DOGE website indicated that it has saved $190 billion through a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings and workforce reductions.” The amount saved per taxpayer is $1,180.12.
While this falls far short of the $2 trillion goal, several news organizations have also reported that DOGE previously overstated some of its savings and published errors and misleading information.
At the same time, DOGE could actually cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year, according to an estimate from the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan research and advocacy group for the federal workforce, per CBS News. This includes the costs associated with re-hiring mistakenly fired workers, lost productivity and paid leave for thousands of federal workers.
“The $135 billion cost to taxpayers doesn’t include the expense of defending multiple lawsuits challenging DOGE’s actions, nor the impact of estimated lost tax collections due to staff cuts at the IRS,” reports CBS News.
Either way, not much has happened lately to carry the idea forward. A formal proposal for a dividend has yet to be made in Congress. Even if Americans were to get a check, at this point, it seems unlikely to amount to much. Since DOGE has revised its savings from $2 trillion to $150 billion, 20% (or $30 billion) would mean a one-time DOGE dividend of around $380.
At the same time, as of July 15, estimates by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation show Trump’s tariffs could cost American households an average of $1,296 in 2025.
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