This is why the tax code needs to be simplified.
When Demonrats says “A simple tax code is not progressive” what they are saying is that they want a tax code that allows them to threaten and oppress the middle class and poor.
I’ve always been a proponent of having a tax code that allows you to file on a form no bigger than a postcard. But that won’t happen in this incarnation of the Republic. Too many subsidies, programs, handouts, and otherwise general pigs at the trough. Let’s face it - this country is going to collapse under the weight of it’s own greed, graft, grand larceny, and self-interested, ‘me first’ third parties. Part of me wants to live long enough to watch the inevitable and gloat, but another part doesn’t want to be around to try and claw my way out of the rubble. Everything folks like us have tried to do in the last fifty years has been nothing more than putting another Band Aid on a gushing artery. And don’t bitch about me being another defeatist throwing in the towel - open your eyes wide enough, and you’ll start seeing the trees and not the forest. Our future was bought and paid for generations ago. As Mencken said a century ago, an election is just an advanced auction of stolen goods. As is was then, as it is now. Imagine a Sanders or Warren in the White House, with a Congressional majority. They might as well mandate the distribution of cyanide capsules.
This has nothing to do with a simplified tax code. This is almost all due to the EITC and Additional Child Tax Credit. They allow a family to get a “refund” of $9-10,000 with an annual income of 30K.
Wealthy people - including Donald Trump - don’t use TurboTax. TurboTax ought to be called TurboCheat because you can claim ANYTHING using TurboTax. People with CPAs tend to have decent tax returns.