What’s Left for Biden to ‘Stimulate’?

The IRS is mailing out Covid-era credits to anyone still eligible

WSJ editorial. 

"A late bonus is on the way to about one million distracted tax filers. In time for the holidays, the Biden Administration says it will mail a Covid-era credit to people who didn’t claim it by 2021. Any need for “stimulus” is long past, but the feds think it would be a shame to miss one last chance for mass handouts.

The Internal Revenue Service announced last week that it will automatically pay the Recovery Rebate Credit to anyone still eligible for it, with checks set to be mailed by New Year’s Day. The credit is available to anyone who missed at least one of the stimulus checks Congress sent in 2020 and 2021.

Recipients must earn less than $80,000 a year, or $160,000 for couples. The amount of the credit depends on factors such as income level, but it can be as much as $1,400.

It’s one of countless credits that filers can claim on their returns, and it’s far from little-known. It was the second most-claimed credit in 2020, with 31 million claims worth $45 billion. And since it’s a refundable credit, available to people who owe little or no income tax, it’s likely that millions of people filed returns specifically to claim it.

So it’s odd that the IRS would go out of its way to make sure no one misses out years later. Unlike nearly every other credit, the IRS is sending out payments without requiring recipients to claim them, as long as they filed a 2021 return. Even filers who apparently declined the credit—by marking $0 on their returns—will find a check in their mailbox.

These gifts come at a cost to other taxpayers, and the IRS predicts it will distribute $2.4 billion of last-chance checks. That’s nearly as much as the agency spends in a year on taxpayer services, such as fielding calls and investigating claims from filers whose returns they’ve botched.

The rationale for the late payments is the same one behind the last payouts, which Congress passed and President Biden signed well into the post-Covid economic recovery. The payments were popular, and low unemployment and rising inflation were no impediment as Democrats sought political credit.

The payments make even less sense now when there are no pandemic lockdowns and the job market is healthy. But as a new political era dawns, Democrats want to shovel out the door every last dollar they can."