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>You do not exempt the basic income from the normal taxation rules

I have a really hard time understanding the logic here... "Let's give everyone 11 dollars, then spend a bunch of money (enforcement does cost) to make sure all those people give 1 dollar back to us before the year is up." What am I missing?

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It's treated as income and consequently requires no additional enforcement. Whatever agency pays out this amount would also send some sort of 1099 like document. This information would be available to the IRS (which would also have greatly simplified tax rules with the other things GP is proposing). So if you fail to report your $11k on your tax documents it'd be glaringly obvious. If it's your only income, you pay no taxes (and don't get a refund, no taxes have been taken yet). If you have any other income, you might pay taxes on it at some marginal rate.

Progressive tax brackets. Basically, if you had an income of $80k/yr before UBI, and UBI is $10k/yr, you'd get taxed on $90k/yr worth of income.

Current tax rates on UBI-only levels of income is basically zero.

It's essentially a way to get higher income people to pay more for UBI without having what is easy to interpret as a tax increase.

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