Why do you think the prebate monitors wealth or income? The exact same amount of money gets sent to every household, whether you’re Joe Poor or Bill Gates. The only variable is family size.
The bureaucrats who determine the size of the prebate already exist. The government calculates poverty statistics every month, so it’s information we already have.
And I doubt a lot of physical checks would get sent out. I’ve always heard it described as a direct deposit system, or prepaid credit cards for people who don’t have bank accounts.
But, I still contend that the prebate will be the political football. Poor people will always support the pols that want to increase the prebate, whether the gov’t has the money or not. As the amount increases, more & more people become ever more dependent on that monthly check. You will NEVER be able to lower the prebate without seriously angering the ENTIRE population. No pol will ever allow that to happen. The gov’t statistics used to justify the prebate will simply be manipulated to generate the “desired” result.
I also read the weak arguments against sales tax exemptions. The army of lobbyists and special interest groups mentioned are lobbying to lower MY purchase cost, & that is a GOOD thing! The pols are between a rock & a hard place. To grant a new exemption, they have to take it out of their OWN bureaucratic pocket - less taxes mean less to spend or a bigger deficit. Pols don’t like to cut taxes, especially liberal ones.
And the nonsense about the rich gaining more benefit from exemptions is a laugh. The rich eat filet mignon, the poor eat 80% lean “hamburger”. The rich buy a new car every year, the poor buy used cars (no tax) every 10 years. The rich fly first class, the poor take the bus. The rich shop at the “Gucci” stores, the poor at Walmart. The rich get hair transplants & a face lift, while the poor get a baseball cap.
As for the number of paper checks - that is the least of it. Getting the amount right, & to the right person is the problem. Thousands of people are born & die, marry, divorce, change residence, & reach age 18 every month. We are gonna have to notify the gov’t EVERY time something occurs in the family that might affect the prebate. That is probably a bazillion changes a year. Tracking these changes & sending the right amount to the right people will make the current IRS processing of YEARLY refund checks seem like perfection. And the people that will suffer the most are the poor who desperately need that missed check.
Why does the FT contain such a bureaucratic pig as the prebate, when sales tax exemptions are far easier to administer, & common sense tells everyone they are fair because they apply to everyone equally?
The prebate is “of the bureaucrats, by the bureaucrats, & for the bureaucrats”.