this post was submitted on 07 Aug 2024
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https://www.marketplace.org/2023/11/09/whats-the-deal-with-speaker-mike-johnsons-financial-disclosure/
He claimed 0 assets. No stocks, no interest earning bank accounts, no mutual funds, no CDs. That's awfully suspicious.
Yeah. Maybe the most important word here is "claimed".
Don't you need an account for your paycheck? Like they don't pay cash.
Some places pay cash, and some will pay in pre-paid debit cards. That's not usually the case for the U.S. Gov't, though!
What kind of scammer is paying in prepaid debit cards?
McDonald’s did this I believe
Dollar Tree, too. A friend of mine worked there for two weeks, quit when her first paycheck came as a debit card.
At least some Safeways do this for anyone without direct deposit.
According to FDIC, about 4.5% of US households do not have a bank account of any kind, but that number is much higher when you only include low income households. Some choose not to have an account, some are denied accounts by banks for various reasons.
https://www.fdic.gov/analysis/household-survey/index.html
Also, most banks only offer free checking accounts with direct deposit or a minimum balance. I don't know if this is still the case, but I worked for a payroll processor many years ago and, at that time, many small businesses chose not to offer direct deposit to their employees. Paying bank fees is very difficult for low income households.
One of the options the company I worked for had was to offer refillable debit cards to employees that their paychecks would be deposited to. This gave them the basic features of a bank without needing to create their own account.
I had not heard of this before. So who owns the account? Can they go to the bank website and check their balance and transfer money? Can they pay bills online? Withdraw cash from an atm?
If so, that has pretty much all the functionality of a checking account. I suppose minus the actual check writing. Are they worried low income people will do check fraud? Or maybe just overdraw with checks?
It's been a long time since I worked in that space, but I think it is basically like a reloadable prepaid card you can get from visa or mastercard. I would assume there actually is a bank behind it, but the account is essentially being sponsored by someone else and there is less risk for the bank because you can't write a bad check or overdraw the account. That makes it potentially useful if the reason you didn't get an account is because the banks refused you or you couldn't afford the fees. For people who are just anti-bank or worried about financial privacy, they would still want to go cash only.
On a side note, reloadable cards can also be useful if you have friends or relatives that you want to help out now and then, especially if they are not local and maybe make poor decisions. It's cheaper than Western Union or a money order, more secure than mailing cash, and no risk of them having access to your bank account number from sending a check.
I briefly worked for a place that paid to a pre-paid Visa card like you're saying. They basically gave you the card when you started and you did all the activation. It was a temp agency so it made it more convenient when it came to getting paid per diem or for short term work. The business paid the agency, the agency paid you. At the time it didn't seem too sketchy (20+ years ago) but I'd be pretty cautious about doing something like that now.
Basically any employer that regularly hires people that can't get bank accounts.
You can cash a paycheck without an account it just costs you to
Mike Johnson cashes his checks at walmart confirmed.
If you go to the bank that issued the check, they should cash it for free.
Do you have an ADP branch close by?
ADP is just the payroll processing company. If you opt to receive a paper check, it will come from a bank like wells Fargo, us bank, chase etc.
Every paper check ive gotten for 20+ years was an ADP one
Right, but they aren't a bank.
I've gotten my share of checks like that. ADP might have printed the check, but the bank it's drawing from is owned by the company. You should see their name and address in the top left corner.
Unless it says "ADP" in which case they are from ADP because you work for them.
Only address that was on mine was to the corporate headquarters in illinois
Right, but they just print the check and do the math for withholding and stuff. The check itself will be issued by Bank of America or something.
::walks into the liquor store::
You all cash checks here, yeah?
Is he married? Maybe all of it is in his wife’s name.
or an LLC or some other tax haven
This is most likely the correct answer.
Hides assets and protects them from prying investigation
I support that's possible.
"Actually, the Speaker’s office told Marketplace that he does have a personal bank account, but it’s exempt from House reporting rules because it doesn’t earn interest."
Lol
Oh the perfect cover for massive bribes got it.
None of our bank accounts really pay interest, 0.01% come on.
No claimed assets + religious nutjob suggests to me that he gives all his income to some cult leader.
The cult leader? Itself.