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hvb2today at 4:59 PM2 repliesview on HN

> In practice though tax cuts usually make rich richer without helping the economy to grow (because of lobbying/corruption).

This is being generous. It's much simpler.

The poor don't pay any federal taxes at all so you can't give them a tax cut because they don't pay any. You can give them a credit at best.

Edit:

Some data

> Another 60.3 million returns showed AGIs of less than $30,000. The average effective tax rate for those taxpayers was 1.5%, even before refundable tax credits were applied.

From: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/04/18/who-pays-...


Replies

citrin_rutoday at 5:06 PM

> The poor don't pay any federal taxes at all so you can't give them a tax cut

Even if we exclude poor there are many options how to split taxes between different income brackets, how to tax salaries vs capital gain, how to split taxes between individuals and businesses, how to avoid loopholes e. t. c. (e. g. in the UK I see small business struggling because of rising taxes while multinationals pay little taxes by moving profits offshore and reporting no profits in the UK).

SlightlyLeftPadtoday at 5:09 PM

37% of personal returns below the standard deduction is way more than I would have expected.