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Tech billionaire Elon Musk is considering paying $5,000 in “dividends” in the form of tax refunds to American households, using DOGE savings he has yet to prove exist.
The plan, which Musk responded to in a post on X Tuesday, was quickly mocked by critics on social media as way “premature.”
One called the shaky offer an attempt to make the public “complicit in destroying our own government and country.”
It’s unclear if Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency will ever have any “dividends” or if it will ultimately make any real inroads in the federal government’s costs, given its crippling $36 trillion debt, and the massive $4.5 trillion tax cut Republicans are now considering.
The entire annual budget for United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which Musk shuttered through DOGE, was a fraction of the possible future annual tax cut alone.
Musk claimed Monday that DOGE has already saved $55 billion, but could only demonstrate about a third of those savings, and those included agencies closed during the Biden administration, The Daily Beast noted.
The idea for a public DOGE dividend was floated in a post on X by James Fishback, CEO of investment firm Azoria, and reportedly an outside adviser to DOGE.
He suggested in a message shared with Musk that a “tax refund check” worth about $5,000 could be sent to America’s “tax paying” households after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026. It would be covered with a portion of the total savings delivered by DOGE, which Musk has boasted will amount to $2 trillion. (Though he later admitted that figure will be difficult to attain.)
Musk responded to Fishback’s plan in a post on X Tuesday that he would “check with the president about it.”
