Taxes
...tion will be once the rules are set and the veil is lifted. Under this situation, I am sure that all of us would agree to expect some type of help from the government and any type of tax credit or incentive because the economic help is needed. If we put ourselves in the original position, we would not gamble our future, we would be conservative and we would not agree to rules that would most likely make us have to face a harsh life of suffering. Instead we would all try to maximize our chance to be helped and to have a chance of survival. According to Rawls behind the veil of ignorance, we would follow the “maximin rule” for making decisions in which all of us would select the alternative under which the worst that could happen to us is better than the worst that can happen to us under any other alternative. We should all try to maximize the minimum we would receive. In this case, we would like to maximize the little help the government offers. Tax credits and incentives maximize the freedom and the liberty of people who are helped by them. For instance, lets picture a single mother with two kids. Her income is not enough to provide health insurance for her kids. She gets paid minimum wage, she can barely make her rent payment and she is lucky if she can buy her kids toys to play with. In this situation any help the government can provide would be of great help for her and for her kids. Thanks to the WIC program, her kids have milk and cereal every week to eat. Thanks to the Medicaid program her kids are insured and can be treated in case of sickness. Thanks to pre-school programs she can save some money for daycare. An even better, when tax declaration month comes, she would have a “break” for having low income and the little credit she receives is used to give her kids a few of the many things her kids don’t have. According to the Internal Revenue Service in order for a person to get tax credit for a child has certain limitation. For 2004 when filing taxes the gross income amount cannot exceed a certain amount. • $34,458 ($35,458 if married filing jointly) with two or more qualifying children. • $30,338 ($31,338 if married filing jointly) with one qualifying child. • 11,490 ($12,490 if married filing jointly) with no qualifying children. For 2004, the maximum credit amounts per child are: • Two or more children — $4,300 • One child — $2,604 • No children — $390 If we were to take away all the tax credits and incentives, the least advantaged in this situation would be the children. They did not ask to be created and still they are the ones that suffer the consequences. Of course parents suffer too, but at the long run, children are...