Victim of Negative Income Tax

By Kevin

Because of his four young children, Lee S. Wishing has become a beneficiary victim of the defacto negative income tax:

Believe it or not, the federal government is going to give me $646 of your money.
If you feel that bad about it, Lee, you can donate the legal plunder to George Mason University's Economics Department.

-- April 5, 2005 12:19 PM |

Comments

Ian wrote:

Out of curiosity, what has the $35 that has already been donated gone to?

-- April 5, 2005 1:17 PM ∞

Buzzcut wrote:

I'm in the same boat, thanks to 2 kids, a big mortgage and property taxes, and the "lifetime learning tax credit".

What a stupid income tax system we have!

Not that I care enough to donate it to a college. If I were redesigning our tax system, the first thing that I would eliminate is the tax free status of donations to colleges and universities.

-- April 5, 2005 2:06 PM ∞

Kevin Brancato wrote:

Re: $35

I haven't a clue.

-- April 5, 2005 4:37 PM ∞

Acad Ronin wrote:

We, as citizens of the US, have created a mutual income insurance scheme mediated by the government. Sometimes you win (in the same sense that you win when you die and the life insurance policy pays off), and most of the time you lose(in the same sense that you lose when you pay your premium for life insurance and you don't die).

Now, I personally may not like pro-natalist policies, which are an element, though not a necessary one in this story, but there are a lot of US policies I don't like, including some that are far less defensible and more harmful than this. (Agricultural subsidies, sugar protection, textile import quotas, fuel efficiency standards, tax-deductability of mortgate interest and local taxes, come to mind, and I could readily find others.) Still, I have visited and lived in many countries, and net-net, I am retaining my US citizenship.

-- April 6, 2005 2:23 PM ∞

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