Again, more of the same guessing and misinformation sprinkled in with a few facts.

Here's the truth: the qualifications WILL be based on tax returns from the 2018 calendar year. If a person didn't file that year then they will not receive a check. Pretty simple. And, of course, there's the income amount restrictions of $75k for a single filer and $150k for joint filers, where the $1200/person amt. (or whatever they settle on) gets reduced all the way to zero once the income level hits $99k/$198k. Probably of little importance to many gamblers is the additional $500/child to income-qualified tax payers. Of more importance is how the qualifying income levels are based on AGI, which means those W2G's come into play BEFORE deductions for losses.

Saying SS provides "little income" is irrelevant. Anyone who's worked and contributed the tax gets it. We both get about $2500/mo. each in SS benefits and I agree, it's not a lot to live on. But the distribution of $1200 checks completely disregards pensions, investments, retirement accounts etc. unless your income exceeds the limits because of these things. In ourparticular case, we both also receive about $2500 each in pensions, which keeps us as joint filers under the limits unless we had $78,001 in additional income from other sources for 2018. And this is where the W2G's, interest, dividends, etc. would come into play because of the AGI baseline.