A Senate bill that would pay rebates out of tariff revenue has sat untouched since the day it was introduced. S. 2475, the American Worker Rebate Act of 2025, was introduced by Sen. Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, on July 28, 2025, and was read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance that same day. Its text carries a December 31, 2026 cutoff for advance refunds and credits, a date that matters only if Congress passes the bill and the President signs it, and neither has happened.
Two entries on the record, both from one day
The official BILLSTATUS record for the 119th Congress lists exactly two actions on S. 2475: “Introduced in Senate” and “Read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance,” both dated July 28, 2025. The latest action on the record is that referral. The record, last updated April 2, 2026, carries no markup, no committee report, no floor vote and no passage by either chamber.
It also carries no enacted flag and no sign that the bill has died. That puts S. 2475 in a narrow category: a proposal that is still technically alive in the Senate and has gone nowhere. The record describes the bill’s purpose as amending the Internal Revenue Code to provide rebates to individuals using tariff proceeds. Nothing in the record shows a payment schedule, because none exists outside the bill’s own words.
The December 31, 2026 line is inside the bill
The bill adds a new section to the tax code, headed “Tariff Rebates for Individuals,” and subsection (f) is titled “Advance Refunds and Credits.” The text as introduced says that “No refund or credit shall be made or allowed under this subsection after December 31, 2026.”
That sentence is the source of the date in the headline. It is a limit written into a draft, not a payment date announced by the Treasury or the Internal Revenue Service. If the bill is never enacted, no advance refund or credit of any kind arises from it, and the December 31 date passes without effect. The sponsor’s draft would have to be passed in its current form, or amended, before any date in it could govern anything.
The $600 is a floor, not a flat check and not a cap
The rebate amount is written as “the greater of” two figures. The first is $600. The second is the amount of qualifying tariff proceeds received during the taxable year, divided by the total number of eligible individuals and qualifying children, rounded to the nearest dollar. Whichever figure is larger becomes the applicable amount.
A rebate larger than $600 would therefore appear only if tariff proceeds divided by the number of people counted came out above $600. Otherwise the floor applies. The bill defines qualifying tariff proceeds as revenues received in the general fund of the Treasury that are attributable to duties, including supplemental duties, imposed after January 20, 2025. An individual taxpayer’s amount is then multiplied up for each qualifying child within the meaning of section 24(c) of the tax code.
Because the second figure depends on proceeds that have not been tallied against this bill and on a headcount the bill leaves to the Treasury, no single payment amount can be read off the text. The bill itself uses the language of a minimum.
Who the bill leaves out and where it phases down
The same text defines an eligible individual by exclusion. It leaves out nonresident aliens, anyone who can be claimed as a dependent by another taxpayer, and estates and trusts.
The bill then phases the rebate down for higher earners. The credit shrinks by 5 percent of adjusted gross income above $150,000 on a joint return, above $112,500 for a head of household, and above $75,000 for any other taxpayer. Those thresholds are the bill’s own proposals, and like every other figure in the draft, they would be open to change in committee, where S. 2475 has stayed since July 2025.
What the record supports today
Every claim about payments from this bill remains conditional. The bill is a proposal, its sponsor is Senator Hawley, and the Senate Finance Committee has taken no recorded step on it since the referral. The BILLSTATUS entry, read on October 5, 2026, still shows the July 28, 2025 referral as the most recent action, and it marks the bill neither as enacted nor as dead.
The figures in this article come from the introduced print, the version tied to the July 28, 2025 referral. Because the record lists no later action, no committee amendment or substitute text could have altered the $600 floor, the income thresholds or the December 31, 2026 sentence quoted above. A reader looking for a payment date, an amount or an application route for a tariff rebate will find none of the three in an agency notice, because no agency has been given anything to administer. Until the Committee on Finance acts or the Senate passes some version of the draft, the bill describes a proposal and nothing more.
Eleven senior benefit programs with income limits and an application
The Benefits Checklist is written for people 65 and older who may qualify for benefit programs that carry income limits. None of these programs enrolls anyone on its own, so the applicant has to find the program, learn that year’s limit and apply.
The gap is that the programs, their limits and their phone numbers sit in separate places, and a household can miss a program simply by not knowing which ones exist.
The Benefits Checklist is a 69-page guide to 11 benefit programs, with the 2026 income limits and a 50-state phone directory, and a printable tracker comes with the download so each call and application can be logged in one place.
Look up the 2026 income limits for the 11 programs in The Benefits Checklist →
This article was produced with AI assistance and checked against the Congress record and bill text cited above before publication.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
