Partially true, and partially not.
You only get the earned income tax credit if have SOME income, therefor those who get the earned income tax credit did do SOME work. And you can get the earned income tax credit without having dependents, and in that not also getting any child tax credit.
The other category both the tax rules and the idea behind this article miss is that there are all sorts of people, millions possibly, illegal aliens among them, who get cash unreported income. They work and are paid by someone, in cash, either by the job, or daily, weekly or monthly even, with no record of it sent to the IRS. They are part of the economy but their data is not in any official tax numbers. The IRS has used a number of methods to estimate the unreported income. It’s huge, about $500 billion. One question is, how draconian would Federal laws and regulations become to catch all cash income, and no natter the financial result would we like the legal result. The quandary almost makes you want to go for a national sales tax, an idea I have personally never liked.
I totally agree
National sales tax is a horrible idea.
You would need a Constitutional amendment to make it work because you would have to repeal the income tax amendment or you can bet that you would end up with the sales tax and the income tax.
I also believe that it is immoral to force employers to collect taxes as a consequence of doing business.
There is a HUGE, untaxed cash economy in California - construction workers, illegal or not, are paid in cash - this keeps them eligible for government benefits - and also gets them out of paying child support - a local lawyer told me they now send agents out to the work sites to collect child support payments straight from the foreman, that is the only way they could get it.
I also live around a lot of Eastern Europeans and they always ask for cash - for tires, for catering (got a 20% discount plus free desserts for paying cash), for haircuts - I had an expensive fence put around my property, the owner of the company asked for payment in cash, which I did, saved me the state sales tax, which is over 10% around here.
California also has the highest percentage of welfare recipients of any state - as productive citizens and businesses flee the state - this is not sustainable.