3,000 Millionaires Received Un-Employment Benefits In 2008

From Newsmax:

3,000 Millionaires Get Unemployment Benefits




With the economy plunging into recession in 2008, nearly 3,000 American millionaires collected jobless benefits that year, according to Internal Revenue Service data.



The IRS said 2,840 households reporting at least $1 million in income in 2008 collected a total of $18.6 million in unemployment benefits. Of those households, 806 had incomes over $2 million and 17 had incomes over $10 million.



“It’s a larger number than I would have expected, but people at any income level can lose their jobs,” Alan Viard, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told Bloomberg.com.



In addition, 8,011 households reporting income between $500,000 and $1 million claimed jobless benefits totaling $52.8 million in 2008. No IRS numbers are available yet for 2009.



Unemployment benefits are insurance, so the program is not need-based and anyone who loses a job is entitled to compensation.



A year earlier, 2007, “so few millionaires collected jobless benefits that the IRS said it refused to publish the data for fear their identities could be detected in violation of confidentiality laws,” Bloomberg reported.



Overall, 9.5 million taxpayers received $43.7 billion in jobless benefits in 2008.



The federal government has helped pay unemployment benefits beyond the 26 weeks paid for by the states, but federal aid is scheduled to expire in November