"In an accounting sense, it's actually a reduction in revenue..."
Naturally. Just using a classical rhetorical flourish to make a tax reduction sound like an expense increase. OK, I suspect that fooled no one. On the other hand, if you push the EITC to the point where some of the poor get paid, I think it does count as an expense.
"... the feds are outsourcing most of the bureaucracy to whomever is preparing the tax returns."
I had a lesson in the social and economic costs of outsourcing bureaucracy (and imposing restrictions on the use of money for social welfare) a week or two ago when I ended up in the grocery line behind a woman who was using WIC checks to pay for baby food. Nowadays food stamps seem to take the form of simple debit cards which you can use at the register (I don't know all of the details, but they appear to work fairly seamlessly). By contrast, a WIC check is a giant thing which specifies in excruciating detail which products it may be used to purchase. An egregious example: the counter attendant was trying to reject the purchase of a 12oz container of frozen juice because the coupon specifies an 11.5oz container of frozen juice in large print. In very fine print is "11.5 or 12oz". Each check covers a small number of purchases (usually just 1 item) and must be countersigned by the bearer, run through a three-step process by the grocery store (including individual back-printing by the register). What appeared to be a pretty simple and small grocery purchase took 45 minutes to ring up. This was a humiliating waste of time to the low-income mother who presumably has to do this every single week. It was a giant waste of time for the checkout attendants who had to deal with it, as well. It was clear the rules were poorly understood at best.
It was clear that government had designed a program whose costs would be borne disproportionately by others, in the name of making mothers buy exactly the supplies the government thought they ought to be buying. The level of complexity in this day and age (especiallly given the existence of, eg, manufacturer's coupons and the like which just scan and go) was absolutely shocking.
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winterfish
no subject
Date: 2007-02-15 04:26 pm (UTC)Naturally. Just using a classical rhetorical flourish to make a tax reduction sound like an expense increase. OK, I suspect that fooled no one. On the other hand, if you push the EITC to the point where some of the poor get paid, I think it does count as an expense.
"... the feds are outsourcing most of the bureaucracy to whomever is preparing the tax returns."
I had a lesson in the social and economic costs of outsourcing bureaucracy (and imposing restrictions on the use of money for social welfare) a week or two ago when I ended up in the grocery line behind a woman who was using WIC checks to pay for baby food. Nowadays food stamps seem to take the form of simple debit cards which you can use at the register (I don't know all of the details, but they appear to work fairly seamlessly). By contrast, a WIC check is a giant thing which specifies in excruciating detail which products it may be used to purchase. An egregious example: the counter attendant was trying to reject the purchase of a 12oz container of frozen juice because the coupon specifies an 11.5oz container of frozen juice in large print. In very fine print is "11.5 or 12oz". Each check covers a small number of purchases (usually just 1 item) and must be countersigned by the bearer, run through a three-step process by the grocery store (including individual back-printing by the register). What appeared to be a pretty simple and small grocery purchase took 45 minutes to ring up. This was a humiliating waste of time to the low-income mother who presumably has to do this every single week. It was a giant waste of time for the checkout attendants who had to deal with it, as well. It was clear the rules were poorly understood at best.
It was clear that government had designed a program whose costs would be borne disproportionately by others, in the name of making mothers buy exactly the supplies the government thought they ought to be buying. The level of complexity in this day and age (especiallly given the existence of, eg, manufacturer's coupons and the like which just scan and go) was absolutely shocking.