I was listening to a local "celebrity"/future politician speak the other day where he proposed a solution to high taxation across the US.

His proposition involves the tax returns Americans get every spring. For non Americans, a tax return is a smaller sum of the federal or state taxes you paid returned to you. For an example, if you are a single individual making about 40-50k annually, you could expect a tax return between 1-2k assuming you don't have any personal businesses that would require you to pay in.

A long complaint many middle class Americans have is that their tax return is only usually around $1,000 though, when they paid more in taxes that year. However, people who make much less or people who receive government welfare, typically get tax returns upwards of 6-10k. This is due to something called EIC or Earned Income Credit which provides families in poverty "bonuses" or low income families with extra return money, money they did NOT pay in taxes that year. A lot of middle class Americans find this unfair and want to see change.

The politician proposed this: instead of paying lower income families with extra return money arbitrarily, (which is taken from the taxes middle class and above paid in that year), EVERYONE gets exactly half of the amount of federal taxes they paid in. So if you only paid $1,000 of taxes annually with a low wage job, you'd receive a $500 return. If you paid $6,000 in taxes annually with a higher wage job, you'd receive a return of $4,000. He explained the idea of a RETURN is getting back some of the money YOU earned and paid to the IRS; and that a return is not getting only a small fraction of your money back, while the rest is provided to other families who didn't pay as much in taxes as you.

What do you think of this proposition? Do you think it is fair or unfair? (Also please don't turn this into a bashing fest! Explain your opinion without trying to bash the rich or bash the poor). I thought it was an interesting idea.