Oh, this adds another twist to why taxes are so complicated in the US. If the IRS was not bogged down in the tax reports of commoners, they might have more time for mischief, like pursuing Schaeffler and friends.
* 1040 (including Schedule 4, to report Form 8959 bits on)
* 6251 (they probably don't owe AMT now, but need to fill out the form to prove it)
* 8959 (because wage income over $250k).
If they have any savings that's not cash under a mattress, probably add form 8960 and 1040 Schedule B or D or both (but now we have non-W2 income, of course). If they own a house, likely add Schedule A. If they have kids, probably add Schedule 3 for the child care credit and form 2441.
Plus the various worksheets involved (child credit, not to be confused with the child care credit, the actual tax computation worksheet, etc), which I guess don't have to be filed with the IRS, at least.
Now I agree that this is not really complicated in the grand scheme of things. I also agree that for people at lower income levels the 1040 is the only thing involved if no kids, add form 2441 if they have kids and are not stay-at-home parenting.
8 pages of EIC credit table. 10 pages of tax table. Longish, but pretty simple.
Now there are in fact things in there that are not simple. Filing status is usually simple, unless you try to figure out "head of household", in which case it's not. But in general, the 1040 is quite simple as tax forms go, and the instructions are mostly long because they are written out with a lot of detail and to be easy to follow, and have to cover various edge cases.
Then the corporations and the state would together dictate what you had to do to be eligible for the welfare.
Now, 25% of what?
Oh wait that’s the problem ain’t it. As the article notes in extreme detail there’s a lot of ways to argue about what is and isn’t income.
Defining what 'income' really is or what an allowable 'expense' is, not so easy. Should two farmers helping each other out 1099 each other? Can a wealthy but chronically ill executive write off his RN wife's presence on a business trip?
...and then all the corner cases go to tax court.
Thing is, life is more complicated than law.
But most of the time, in the course of getting passed, proposed simplifications become additions instead of replacements. It's depressing.
To me, it's like the handwaving you hear about simply using a consumption tax. No doubt, people would find an infinite number of ways to game the system toot sweet.
Of course, implementing socially desirable behavior via tax law just throws even more complexity in the mix. Generally, I'd say that the larger the government share of GDP, the more opportunity for craziness. If your underlying culture doesn't reign anything in, mayhem results.
[...]
Being told that there are no social classes in the place where the interviewee lives is an old experience for sociologists. "'We don't have classes in our town' almost invariably is the first remark recorded by the investigator," reports Leonard Reissman, author of Class in American Life (1959). "Once that has been uttered and is out of the way, the class divisions in the town can be recorded with what seems to be an amazing degree of agreement among the good citizens of the community."
[...]
The special hazards attending the class situation in America, where movement appears so fluid and where the prizes seem available to anyone who's lucky, are disappointment, and, following close on that, envy. Because the myth conveys the impression that you can readily earn your way upward, disillusion and bitterness are particularly strong when you find yourself trapped in a class system you've been half persuaded isn't important. When in middle life some people discover that certain limits have been placed on their capacity to ascend socially by such apparent irrelevancies as heredity, early environment, and the social class of their immediate forebears, they go into something like despair, which, if generally secret, is no less destructive.
-- from Paul Fussell's Class: A Guide Through the American Status System, Chapter 1, "A Touchy Subject" (typed in from the book, any errors probably mine)
It doesn't so much matter that their attitudes and behaviors are strictly better, but that conforming to them and knowing about the things they know and being able to relate to them that way lets you network on a level those "under" them cannot, reinforcing the class hierarchy. You may be able to get a country club sponsorship on the power of your income, but someone else might swing it by being able to talk sailing or swapping prep school stories with their boss—and oh hey you play squash my brother needs a partner, you're not a member there well we'll have to fix that, you know there's a position open with one of our funds upstairs that I think you'd suit just fine, let me make a call or two...
Secondly, casting aspersions based on class-membership is "all the way out" as a basis for understanding modern economy IMO, either way .. it is prejuidice in another form
Misdirection. Not money, ot more properly, wealth, but power.
Much the topic of Smith's Wealth of Nations, actually. Though modern economics likes to pretend otherwise.