Uncle Sam’s messed-up munificence

When you were a kid, did you ever have an uncle who got drunk at family gatherings and started handing out $20 bills to all the kids?

Even as a child you knew it probably wasn’t right, but you were glad to have the money anyway.

That’s the reaction most of us have to this bogus “Economic Stimulus Payment” soon coming to our mailboxes.

We know it’s stupid, we know it’s wrong, but when that check arrives in the mail, we have no intention of saying, “Return to sender.” We’re cashing that baby.

There are many obvious flaws with the payments as public policy, yet we discovered even one more when chatting with our accountant.

Get this: We don’t qualify for the $300 “child tax credit” for our daughter because she is over the age of 17. Never mind that she (and her college tuition) are costing us more now than at any point during her diaper years. Never mind that we still claim her as a dependent on our taxes.

Then we learned something even weirder: She might get the money!

“Blockbuster and Panera Bread will be thrilled,” said my husband.

She worked two jobs last summer – good for her – so she had more than $3,000 in earned income. That meant the government might place her in the category of the working poor – people who work but don’t make much money.

But … but … she isn’t poor. True, she doesn’t have a lot of money, but she doesn’t have a lot of expenses, either. She’s a dependent with free room and board. Her earnings go to gas and shampoo and movie tickets. (And conditioner, don’t forget conditioner.)

When we first learned of this possibility a month or so ago, we scoffed. The federal government couldn’t possibly be this stupid, we said. I asked a business editor about it. He was dubious. “I doubt they’re going to blanket college campuses with $300 checks,” he said.

Still, there was this bit of internal logic: If we weren’t getting money on her behalf, maybe that meant she’d be getting some herself.

She even received one of those “Important Message from the IRS” fliers at the same time ours arrived. It wasn’t very helpful; we both received the same message. But it added to the general impression that perhaps the feds were alerting her about these upcoming payments because she might be entitled to one.

Like any other red-blooded Americans, we started spending it in our minds.

Eventually it occurred to us that something might be gained by reading the notice. Buried in the fine print was this wet blanket: “Individuals cannot receive a payment if they can be claimed as a dependent of another taxpayer.” I take that to mean neither she nor we will receive $300 to reflect the cost of her care.

So now our household is like the kid at the end of the line at the family party. Just as it’s his turn to get the $20 from the drunken uncle, the uncle sobers up and closes his wallet.

The kid knows he was never entitled to the money, and handing it out to everyone was a stupid idea that would probably get someone in trouble eventually. But still … (whine alert!) … everyone else got the money. And it would’ve bought a lot of conditioner.