Tax talk

Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). Started in 1975, the EITC gives low-income workers a tax credit for every dollar of wages earned.

One dollar in tax cuts may only cost the government eighty cents in lost revenue (or fifty cents in extreme cases), as government is taking a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

Instead of writing, say, a $10,000 check to the local tax collector, you’d be allowed to “spend” some portion of your taxes on the Brickstarter projects that you felt were worthwhile.

Corporate tax revenues are plummeting partly because Congress has larded the corporate income tax with costly preferences and giveaways for corporations, and partly because American multinationals have become so successful at shifting income overseas. Hundreds of millions of dollars—money that might have gone to raising wages, or creating new medic