THE NEW $600 STIMULUS CHECK | What You MUST Know

What's up you guys? It's Graham here. So, it finally happened! After months of waiting and hundreds of Meet Kevin videos later, which admittedly I watched pretty much all of them, a brand new stimulus package was just passed and sent off to the president to sign off on.

What makes this stimulus package so different is that it's not just a proposal anymore. It's not something that's drawn up by the House of Representatives that's immediately going to get shut down and tossed out by the Senate. This is as final as it could get, with 900 billion dollars about to go into effect, including new stimulus checks and benefits to you if you qualify.

So, without further ado, let's talk about the biggest points that are most likely going to affect you in this 5500-page stimulus package. Seriously, it's over 5500 pages long! But it's written like how I would kind of structure my high school English essays—with big font, lots of double spacing, and wide margins to make it seem longer than it actually is. Either way, there's a lot to cover, including when you're gonna be seeing the next stimulus check, continued unemployment benefits, or potentially if you would see rental assistance.

But really quick, before we begin, if you wouldn't mind passing the like button by stimulating it for the YouTube algorithm, it would help me out a lot. No, but seriously, I'm testing this out by only asking you once to hit the like button throughout the entire video, so if you enjoy it, that's all I want. That's it.

So, with that said, thanks so much, and here's what's in the new bill.

All right, so let's talk about the most important items of this package first, and that begins with the increased unemployment benefit of 300 dollars a week until March 14, 2021. Now, this one is very significant because, as of right now, 6.7 percent of Americans are unemployed, and that number might even be higher in January as more businesses have shut down and ceased operations and have furloughed or laid off their employees.

Now, this one is definitely lower than the original 600 dollars a week unemployment benefit that expired on July 31st, but at least 300 dollars a week is an amount that both sides were able to agree on. This is meant to last 11 weeks until March 14th, 2021. And if you find yourself recently unemployed in 2021, then this will be extended to April 5th.

What makes this one unique is that this package also provides an extra 100 dollars a week for unemployed gig workers who earn money from both the standard W-2 job and from self-employment. That means that if you had a side hustle that saw a reduction in income and that money wouldn't be used to qualify towards normal unemployment, well, in this case, it's taken into consideration, and you might be able to get an extra 100 dollars a week depending on your state.

Now, in order to qualify, you need to have earned at least five thousand dollars in 2019 from self-employment income. Now, one more thing I want to mention is that these benefits are not retroactive, so if you've been unemployed these last few months, you're not just going to get one big lump sum paid up front to you.

Now, even though technically this starts on December 26th, each state is going to be differently, so it could take some additional time to process all the claims. Second, we have 25 billion dollars' worth of rental assistance potentially covering up to 12 months' worth of rent alongside an eviction ban until January 31st, 2021. The eviction ban is a simple one. Prior to this, landlords were unable to evict their tenants earning under 99,000 dollars a year through December 31, 2020, who have been impacted by the illness. But with this new stimulus package, the ban was extended another month through January 31st, 2021.

But where this starts to get interesting is within the details of the 25 billion package, and here's what you need in order to qualify. First, one or more members of your household is qualified for unemployment benefits, experienced a reduction in income, or experienced financial hardship due to the pandemic. Second, you could demonstrate a risk of housing instability through either a past due utility bill, past due rent, or an eviction notice, and you have a household income of no more than 80 percent of the area's median income.

However, in order to actually get the benefit, that money is going to be going towards your state, and then your state is going to be allocating that money as needed. They say that eligible households can receive up to 12 months' worth of rent and potentially even up to 15 months' worth of rent. Overall, I do think this is really good for tenants, but I do think it's going to be challenging for states to coordinate this in an effort that's both timely and thorough.

I don't know how they could crack down on fraudulent claims, where one person just rents to a friend of theirs, claims back rent, and then gets paid out by the government while they split the profits and take money away from people who really need it. As with anything, I do think there are going to be cases like this that just slip through the cracks, but at the end of the day, it's really going to be up to the states to get this up and running as fast as possible before the January 31st eviction deadline.

And now, third, the one you've all been waiting for: the additional 600 dollars stimulus checks. At the rate Tesla stock is going, this might soon be enough to purchase exactly one share of Tesla. Coincidence? I think not. Okay, but for real, I know 600 dollars is not quite what people expected. I'm sure a lot of people were holding out for twelve hundred dollar stimulus checks, but 600 dollars is what's coming.

Hopefully, between that and extra unemployment benefits and rental assistance, that should be enough to see us through temporarily. Now, in order to qualify for the 600 dollars stimulus check, you must earn under 75,000 dollars a year if you're single or 150 thousand dollars as a married couple. That stimulus check amount is reduced by five dollars for every 100 you earn above that threshold.

So if you're single earning 87,000 or if you're married earning 174,000, then unfortunately you're not going to get anything. Now, in order for the government to calculate this, they're going to be going based off your 2019 tax return, and if you saw a reduction of income in 2020, then you would get this money back when you file your 2020 tax return.

Now, in addition to this, you're also going to be receiving 600 dollars per qualifying dependent under the age of 17 years old. As far as when you're going to be getting this money, Steve Mnuchin said that it could be as soon as next week since they already have nearly everyone on file from the last time. But, of course, as we all know and have seen, not everything runs efficiently, so some people could see their payment a little bit later than expected depending on how it's processed.

And fourth, we're not done yet! We got 325 billion dollars going towards small businesses, including 284 billion dollars being allocated to the Paycheck Protection Program. Now, for those not aware, the Paycheck Protection Program is aimed at businesses who could take out a very low interest rate loan to keep themselves afloat and keep their employees on payroll.

There are also certain provisions in there which say that if the money is spent on qualified expenses, the entire amount could be forgiven, meaning they don't have to pay it back! Meaning that's pretty much like free money. Now, obviously, something like this is prime for fraud and there's some controversy over who previously took it. But this stimulus package allows for another round of funding for businesses who are in need of the money with a few extra little goodies thrown in.

Now, they say that small businesses who took the first PPP loan and saw their revenues fall by 25% will be eligible for a second loan. Congress is also going to allow PPP borrowers to take full business tax deductions, which is huge. That's kind of like saying here's a free hundred thousand dollars and you're still able to write off a hundred thousand dollars' worth of qualifying business expenses to lower your tax bill even though you just received a hundred thousand dollars that you're not going to have to pay back.

I think the reason they did this is because technically the PPP is structured as a loan, meaning it technically has to be paid back. But if it's forgiven, then it's no longer on the books, and you're still able to take your normal tax deductions as usual. Now, here's the hard truth: so far, the stimulus package absolutely favors businesses over the individual. I think their logic is that if businesses have more money, they'll be able to stay afloat, they'll be able to employ more people, and that, in turn, will flow back into your pockets eventually in the long run.

And fifth, we got a whole bunch of other provisions in here which are very important to mention. We got 82 billion dollars being allocated for schools so they could increase measures to keep everyone safe. We got 69 billion dollars going towards testing, vaccines, and health providers. That gives 30 billion dollars for vaccine distribution, 22 billion for testing and tracing, 9 billion for healthcare providers, and 4.5 billion for mental health.

Then we got 45 billion dollars spent towards transportation. That includes 15 billion for airline payroll support, 10 billion for state highways, 2 billion for airports, and 1 billion for Amtrak. I think these are definitely the winners in this package, but their logic is that the airline and transportation industry is really the backbone of our entire economy, and without it, we're much worse off, so we may as well just give them some money.

Then we got 26 billion dollars going towards increasing food stamp benefits by 15%, and towards farmers and ranchers. Another 15 billion is going towards live event venues, movie theaters, and cultural institutions. 10 billion is going towards childcare assistance, 10 billion is going towards funding of the postal service, and then we got some very unusual things that were just slipped into this bill.

Some of these are good, and some of these make you just scratch your head wondering why. The first, which is a good thing, is a ban on most surprise medical bills. This is what happens when you go to the doctor in an emergency situation, they help you out, and then months later, you're sent this massive bill because the doctor who helped you out was not within your insurance network.

This is a very common practice in hospitals and a very common tactic for insurance companies to refuse to pay out to your claims. So now, thanks to this package, those insurance companies will have to negotiate for those out-of-network costs beginning in 2022. There's also 35 billion dollars going towards clean energy development and research. This is a big win for anyone holding on to green energy stocks, which have seen a big jump today.

Overall, I think the renewable energy market is going to be like the next big tech of the future, but it's a little weird how they put this in a relief package like this. Now, this package also allows for 100% deductibility for business meals, also known as the three martini lunch tax break. Here's the thing: as of right now, if you go to a restaurant and you have a business meal, you're only able to deduct 50% of that off your total income. But now that meal is 100% tax deductible if you go to eat as a qualified business expense.

The goal is that this would encourage more business people to go out to eat at restaurants, thereby helping out the restaurant industry by now making it 100% tax deductible. The fourth, this bill also gives more time to pay back the payroll tax deferral that went into effect earlier on in the year. This won't impact everybody, but if you had your payroll taxes deferred as both the employee or the employer, you're now going to have until the end of 2021 to pay that back.

And now, on the more unusual side of things, there's a statement aiming to improve the dialogue and cooperation between the United States and the Dalai Lama. Just to show that I'm not making it up, it's right here on page 5095. Maybe this was thrown in to make sure people are actually reading it, but I don't know.

Now another little thing that was just slipped in here to get through is what's called the Trademark Modernization Act of 2020. Without going into too much detail here, this allows copyright owners to enforce their trademarks more efficiently, and now because of that, trademark violation is now considered a felony. Like, you remember how Twitch streamers could play a video game, and then those video games are taken down as a copyright violation?

Well, now potentially that's a felony subject to fines of between 15,000 and 30,000. Now, some people interpret content creators as being exempt from this bill and that more so it's aimed to weed out people who would just straight up repackage other people's work, but still, most of this is really open to interpretation, and it has the potential just to be abused.

So overall, there you go. It only took eight months, but we finally got another stimulus package. Now, even though this is not as big as people were expecting just a few months ago, the thinking is that most likely there could be another stimulus package coming in the future, and this one is just meant to temporarily hold us over.

I think the biggest complaint with this so far is that there's a lot of information to go through, and there is no way the Senate was able to review all of this prior to approving it. So, we're kind of at the mercy here, just hoping the money is properly allocated.

But let me know your thoughts on all of this. What you think, is 600 enough? Is this going to set us up for more inflation? Is the stock market going to keep going up because of it? And did you get your four free stocks down below in the description when you deposit 100 on Weeble? Because those stocks could potentially be worth up to 1,600 dollars, and that's pretty much like free money.

So many questions, but I hope this is helpful, and I hope this provides more clarification and context into exactly what's in the 900 billion dollar stimulus package. So, with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching! I really appreciate it. As always, make sure to destroy the subscribe button and the notification bell.

Also, feel free to add me on Instagram; I post pretty much daily, so if you want to be a part of it there, feel free to add me there. As on my second channel, The Graham Stephan Show, I post there every single day. I'm not posting here, so if you want to see a brand new video from me every single day, make sure to add yourself to that.

And lastly, if you guys want those four free stocks, use the link down below in the description. Weeble is going to be giving you four free stocks when you deposit 100 dollars on the platform, with those stocks potentially worth up to 1,600 dollars. So, at that point, like I said, it's pretty much like free money. So, if you like free money, use that link down below. Let me know which stocks you get. Thank you so much for watching, and until next time!