jshore:
CEOs and workers are consumers as are shareholders. If you reduce equiptment spending somebody doesn’t make a buck selling that equiptment. That somebody is also a consumer.
Consumers pay all taxes.
Well, sure, Scylla, since all people consume and since all taxes fall on people then all taxes are paid by consumers if we want to adopt your perverse viewpoint. My point was whether or not the consumers of the particular good in question end up paying the corporate income taxes (i.e., whether the goods are simply priced the addition amount higher to pay the tax); the answer is that they pay some of it but not all of it.
**
There is nothing perverse about it, that’s the way it is.
In point of fact they do.
You have argued that the corporations could pay workers less, or their CEOs less, or not buy new capital equiptment and that would absorb the cost of the taxes.
The fact is that they can do or not do these things regardless of their tax standpoint.
However their business model and profit margins are set, these items are born by the the consumer of the product the company manufactures.
If you eliminate them and replace them with a tax they are still born by the consumer of the product.
To put it simply, You are arguing that if I am carrying two hundred pounds of goods on my back, and you remove 100 pounds of goods and replace it with a 100 pound lead weight, than I am not carrying that lead weight.
And you consider my viewpoint perverse?
A married couples total earned income must be less than $34,178 in order to get ANY EIC. EIC is calculated on EARNED Income & Modified Adjusted Gross Income. Taxable Income does not come into the equation AT ALL.
Thus, a couple earning over $35K, even if they had itemized deductions that reduced their Taxable Income to zero- would still get no EITC.
Kelly & Scylla- you are both wrong- don’t figure TI into it at all. In order to get $854 in EITC, your Earned Income would have to be somewhere around $28,000 with 2 kids & MFJ.
I quote from the 2002 IRS Pub17, pg 251 "Rule 14. Your Earned Income must be less than: $33178 (34,178 if filing jointly) if you have more than one qualifing child. $29, 201 ($30, 201 for mearried filing jointly) if you have one qualifing child and $11060 ($12,060 for MFJ) if you do not have a qualifiying child. On pg 252 the exact same figures are used for the AGI limitation.
DrDeth, when I get home I’ll look over the instructions in the 2002 forms again. It’s possible I made an error as it has been some years since I claimed the EIC for myself.
Haven’t read the rest of the posts, but uh, I have to agree.
Welfare is not getting money for nothing in a lot of cases. The one time I got benefits I was working 3 jobs and still unable to pay rent for a two bedroom apartment, pay bills, and feed my kid and I. I know there are ‘bums’, but to stereotype all recipients is just as bad as saying all janitors are stupid.
I couldn’t fit a fourth job in because I had no time off to fit one in. The working poor are treated like crap even though they are working, and it’s depressing.
Receiving welfare for not ‘giving away welfare money to the gov’t’, that’s cruel logic too.
Do taxes not get used for education, road care, paying politician (I bet they get 300 times as much money as all the welfare recipients do), etc?? I would say the welfare system doesn’t eat up as many taxes as one would think. Welfare recipients are quite often single moms due to either divorce or children out of wedlock, but any money for child support is deducted from the ‘welfare’ cheque. A lot of men are contributing their parts to the ‘welfare’ of their kids. Most of the mothers work too, but do you have any idea how much childcare is!!
Nowadays it is $5.50/hr per childwhere I am, and minimum wage a short time ago was $5.00 an hour…I think it’s $5.90 now, I could be wrong.
But can you see how that would eat up the pay? Even with subsidy the childcare is hard to cover and have some take home pay left.
Then there are people on disability and such.
To keep bringing up ‘welfare’ is not knowing the whole picture of where taxes go.
It makes me very resigned to see this ‘welfare’ scapegoated all the time.
Couple of pre-requisites here. For this type of response you either have to be RIGHT, or wrong, but COMPELLING. So far you’ve been neither. On to the issues.**
Why the hell not? This is exactly the sort of thing the Federal government exists for! They have a large infrastructure(the IRS) who handles this sort of thing for every taxpayer in the country already. This is in parallel to the other services that the Feds provide on a nationwide basis. The idea is that if a service applies in pretty much the same manner regardless of which state a person lives in, then that service is an excellent candidate for a centralized administration instead of evoking the overhead of building many decentralized administration points and having them all answerable to individual laws. This is the primary benefit of having a Federal tier in the first place! To expect each state to rebate each taxpayer’s state-based payroll taxes or state-based sales taxes would require each state to build a ton more infrastructure. Where does your idea stop? Is it also patently ridiculous to ask the state to refund sales taxes paid into municipal coffers? Does this mean we need city-level IRSs? Suburb level? Community level? All of those governmental levels are capable of levying taxes. By your theory they should all maintain their own records and handle refunds for each of their taxpayers.**
Yep. It is a recognition that tax burdens come in more forms than direct Federal Income tax.**
Cite? If you’re referring to the credit tables, the maximum for tax year 2002 was $4,140(the numbers I quoted earlier of $4,008 and three dependents was . This number was present in more rows in the column of “Married filing jointly with 2+ children” than it was under the "single, widow(er), or head of household) columns. This means a broader spectrum of married couples(larger income range) can take the credit than single mothers(smaller income range). Now if you want to say that there are more single mothers with 2+ children in that smaller income range than there are married couples with 2+ children in their(larger) income range then I’d like a cite on that too. Single mothers, while a group which needs a fair bit of support and gets a lot of attention, are not as large a population as you are suggesting. In fact, according to the US Census(PDF) on page 16 of their income report we can see that of the lowest quintile according to income that the margin between married households with children and all types of other family households(meaning there are dependent children in the household and including single parents, widow(er)s, sibling-led households, etc) is 1.6%. There are 1.6% less traditional families in this income quintile than there are other types of families. Offset that with the larger earned income range that married families are allowed to have to claim higher EIC and I’d say it looks like EIC goes to traditional families in roughly the same amount as it goes to other(possibly single-parent) families. This assertion that “the biggest amount of EITC goes to single mothers, with 2 kids or so” is absolute bunk.
Regardless, this whole thing is a hijack unless you are trying to prove that single parent households don’t deserve the credit. A family with either a single parent or a couple of married parents making the same amount of earned income have slightly different tables, but both are eligible for the maximum credit at some point. What is your problem with this? They made the money, they spent the money. In making the money they paid flat rate direct taxes like FICA and any state flat-rate payroll taxes. In spending the money they paid flat rate direct taxes like sales tax, taxes on their landline phone service, taxes on their electricity, etc. They’ve also paid tons of indirect taxes like the rent hike from their landlord to cover his property taxes. Why, if you accept the premise that lower income people should carry a lesser tax burden, does the form of the tax, or the source(federal, local, income, payroll, direct, indirect, etc) make a damn bit of difference?**
Whee! You may have found one situation where the EIC refund is greater than the amount of direct taxes that person pays. That makes the whole program welfare! Whee!
You know what? If a single mom with two kids is making 10,000 gross income and paying 800 in FICA and then another ~500 in sales taxes, direct taxes on utilities and other forms of direct taxes, then she’s getting ~2840 - the amount she pays in indirect taxes, per year in “welfare” from the EITC. Considering she’s already 4,000+ under the poverty line I’m not losing sleep over EITC being “welfare” in this case. And as I’ve noted earlier, I think this case is far, FAR less common than you are representing.**
Nope. Even your hypothetical “rather standard”(again this is a claim you need to substantiate. I’ve recieved EIC in the past and I certainly wasn’t a single mom with two kids) EIC recipient still pays 800 bucks in payroll taxes, direct taxes on utilities, direct sales taxes, and all those lovely indirect taxes like rent hikes to cover landlord’s taxes. Maybe they get more credit than they actually pay, but it would take auditing every single citizen every tax year to prevent such situations. Sounds like an excellent example of the cure being worse than the disease to me.**
Interesting that you’re backpedaling from your earlier claim that EIC was, flat out, welfare and now your position is that EIC is welfare for, not everyone, just some subset.
In Conceivable I’m not making up arguements. You’re nitpicking. My position was stated in my first post “They are still taxpayers. They just don’t pay the Federal Income tax, they still pay the flat rate taxes. EIC is an attempt to reduce that liability for our poorer families.” I chose FICA and state sales taxes as early examples of taxes which still apply to those with no federal income tax liability. That was an example of the types of taxes and the impact some of the easily identifiable taxes. I never intended to limit my arguement to just FICA and sales taxes. They represent some of the largest pieces of the overall tax burden, but my point was that these credits were designed to address the overall tax burden on our poorest families. I stated that in my first post, I gave specific examples in my second, but nowhere did I intend to imply that it was specific taxes versus overall tax burden that should be relieved. Numbers are harder to run on the indirect taxes of higher rent due to property taxes, etc, but the fact is that even rent monies end up, in some part, in the government’s coffers. The EIC attempts to recognize that. What’s the big deal?
Furt my cell phone bill was the only one I had handy. Please don’t pretend this invalidates the proposition that utilities, are taxed. If you like I can point you to a website for my local power utility and show you a sample bill which itemizes taxes on electricity. Do you consider electricity a “luxury” that low income people shouldn’t be entitled to? If they choose to spend their dollars on frivolities like light, hot water, air conditioning, and power for their refrigerator then we should just pocket the taxes and say to them “Want to keep a larger percentage of your income? Don’t buy luxury items.”? The proposition that tax burdens should be proportional to the ability to bear those burdens is well engrained in the US tax system. Some may not like it, but to deny it is fallacious.
BTW, what the hell does the fact that Texas and Florida don’t have state income taxes have to do with anything? The numbers for estimated tax burden based on sales tax rates are based on THE STATE SALES TAX RATES. Is your arguement that Texas shouldn’t be weighted heavily because it’s state sales taxes are higher than other states because it doesn’t have the income channel of a state tax on income? Sure they’re higher for that reason, but the cross-state average was based off of what people actually PAY. Look at this site. The sales taxes are, to the best of my knowledge, accurately represented. If a person lives in Texas then they pay 7.9% on average in sales taxes. Did the fact that they don’t pay a income tax change the number of citizens in Texas who pay these sales taxes? Then what the heck is your point?
Yep, it’s genetic.
Enjoy,
Steven
Damnit.
Sorry about that.
Enjoy,
Steven
Okay, your dad dies and your mom has no insurance money or anything and you are like 2. She also has to take care of your siblings (at least 2). How is she going to save for your college education??? She can’t, she is on welfare, and extra money IS deducted from the cheque so she can’t save money. She didn’t have a college education, and can’t get a good paying job. She can’t save up for college for you or herself.
So, you get out of high school and have honors and everything, and you still don’t get any of the scholarships you apply for.
So you get a bunch of student loans, and something happens when you change your address one summer and you don’t get your loan in time for school to start. You were already on a waiting a list for a year to get into the program you wanted at college, and now you won’t get you class schedule because you can’t pay your tuition in time.
Now, throw in some other details, like having some guy take advantage of you when you were young (got you drunk when your mom was at work) and you get pg.
Well, now how are you going to get back in college when you have a kid to feed and can’t get welfare benefits while you are signed up for college, so any savings and wages are getting eaten up fast!!!
So you finally convince the welfare board that you aren’t going to college and still haven’t been ‘awarded’ the student loan you needed even though school started 3 months ago. So they finally help you out with rent and childcare. You try to sign up for the college courses again, but there’s a waiting list again.
So your’re on welfare and have a low paying job, and your kid has no college savings either.
see how the cycle works??
Not everyone can get a college education, no matter how hard they try (this scenario is similar to mine, but my mom got schizophrenia at 25 and hid me and my brothers from our dad and family for 10 years, my mom’s husband’s family never liked her, and he doesn’t try to find us).
So yeah, I was on welfare once myself, and me and my husband both work for peanuts because we didn’t get to college.
Your term ‘breed’ is sickening. I agree there is a cycle, but it’s the fact that education is extremely costly, and if you have a kid it’s almost impossible to get. I hear people have watched “riding in cars with boys” and get some understanding, but at least that character had normal parents.
First- you made the claim that the std recipeint is a married couple, not a single parent, so you need to rollout your cite first. However, you basicly proved it- your own cite shows more single parent families than traditional families. Most families at this income level are double income, not single income, and the chart (as I quoted) allows a Married couple at the most only $1000 that a sigle parent family. Thus, simply by virtue of the fact that many married couple have two incomes coming in (with the lowest greater than $1000), makes single parents qualified more often & for more EITC.
I am not trying to prove that anyone “doesn’t deserve the credit”. I have not said word one about the fairness of EITC, or whether or not EITC is a good or bad thing, or even whether or not it shoudl be changed or repealed. Don’t put words in other peoples mouths, and make as if they are holding a position that they aren’t. I simply stated that EITC CAN and often DOES result in a refund greater that their tax, thus EITC is “welfare” by another name. Whether or not this is a good fact is up to others, but the fact remains regardless.
Next, you have yet to prove that EITC is currently based upon the Legislative intent of refunding other taxes paid. Again, none of my sources mention this. Where do you get this idea?
I am not backpedaling. Read my original post- I stated that in many cases the recipeint paid 0 taxes and got a refund of up to $4000- “this is indeed, welfare”. I did NOT say it was “flat out-welfare”, nor did I say that EVERYONE who got EITC was getting welfare. Aagin, you keep doing this very rude & disagreeable tactic of putting words in other people mouths- and words that make their position bad. if you keep up with this tactic, I will no longer be able to debate with you, as that is flatly libelous lying & cheating.
And still, if you get a larger refund that you pay, that is welfare- even if that welfare only acts to pay other state & local taxes. It passes the quack, waddle & down tests. It’s welfare, like it or not.
A closer analogy seems to be that you are arguing that you are now carrying 300 lbs. on your back even though I removed the 100 pounds before putting on the lead weight.
My only point here is that who pays certain costs can be distributed differently depending on how the costs are imposed. For the part of the social security tax paid by the employer, it is quite clear that most of this is effectively coming out of the worker’s pay since it is a cost that is tied directly to having that worker and paying him/her what you are paying them. For corporate profits tax, the connection to the products is more indirect and thus it is not a priori as clear how the burden of the costs is being distributed.
I most certainly do not believe that all earned income belongs to the government (and I see no logic as to why that would follow from my initial argument). I believe exactly the opposite. It is mine. However, government has the power to force me into its redistribution plans. Reducing someone’s taxes is almost certainly an income redistribution because, heaven forbid, government will actually reduce spending. Hence the money will have to be raised elsewhere. Bingo - more redistribution.
At least in the fiscal sense, you will see that I am definitely not a liberal. But I can still see an argument for tax deductions being a form of welfare.
But is that because they don’t believe in it, or because it would be political suicide?
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Drabble *
Okay, your dad dies and your mom has no insurance money or anything and you are like 2. She also has to take care of your siblings (at least 2). How is she going to save for your college education??? She can’t, she is on welfare, and extra money IS deducted from the cheque so she can’t save money. She didn’t have a college education, and can’t get a good paying job. She can’t save up for college for you or herself.
Ok, here’s what I found:
snip-
As an example of monthly benefits, let’'s say Tom Brown earns $30,000 a year, is age 35, married and has one child. Tom is severely injured in a car accident and is found to be eligible for Social Security disability benefits. Tom, his wife and their child receive $1,595 each month.
As another example of how Social Security benefits can help the young family, Sara was age 45 and earning $50,000 when she died, leaving her husband and two children. The husband and children receive $2,370 each month based on Sara’'s earnings record.
**So, you get out of high school and have honors and everything, and you still don’t get any of the scholarships you apply for.
So you get a bunch of student loans, and something happens when you change your address one summer and you don’t get your loan in time for school to start. You were already on a waiting a list for a year to get into the program you wanted at college, and now you won’t get you class schedule because you can’t pay your tuition in time.**
So I do what I (and most of my friends) did and that’s work my way through college. No loans, no scholarship. No taxpayer had to suffer in the making of my degree. In fact, I actually paid taxes during those years. Definitely no red “S” on my chest. It took me 16 years to get a 4 year degree. It took that long because I pissed most of my time away. Could have easily done it in 6-7 years. Many of the people I work with, including management, have gone through similar experiences.
**Now, throw in some other details, like having some guy take advantage of you when you were young (got you drunk when your mom was at work) and you get pg. **
That scenario is rape. This was not a planned child. Adoption was not mentioned as an option. A person who can’t provide for him/herself risks total disaster by taking on more responsibilities. I would use the analogy of a sinking boat. A poor swimmer should not take on a child in the hopes of helping it.
So your’re on welfare and have a low paying job, and your kid has no college savings either.
see how the cycle works??
I got a job when I was 15 and have been employed ever since. Lots of crappy jobs at first. My friends and I used our money to buy cars so we had transportation to go to college.
**Not everyone can get a college education, no matter how hard they try (this scenario is similar to mine, but my mom got schizophrenia at 25 and hid me and my brothers from our dad and family for 10 years, my mom’s husband’s family never liked her, and he doesn’t try to find us).
So yeah, I was on welfare once myself, and me and my husband both work for peanuts because we didn’t get to college.
Your term ‘breed’ is sickening. I agree there is a cycle, but it’s the fact that education is extremely costly, and if you have a kid it’s almost impossible to get. I hear people have watched “riding in cars with boys” and get some understanding, but at least that character had normal parents. **
*At the time I thought long-term welfare (as opposed to short-term welfare) was a government sponsored voter breeding program. *
I chose my words carefully. I specifically stated LONG-TERM WELFARE. It is a crutch that creates an unending chain of despair. IMO, long term welfare has been used to buy votes. I could see the process unfolding at the age of 13. When you consider the educational background of most politicians, this is a deliberate, criminal act to enslave people for their own purposes. If you find the term “voter breeding program” ugly it is because it IS ugly.
Your story is a sad one (I mean that). There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t appreciate the lessons my parents gave me. Neither of them went to college but I doubt I have half their knowledge in the areas that count.
You want to play the “you asserted something first” game? Back up the “usu[ally] single moms” bit from this one. I used an example family who could qualify for the maximum benefit(the five member family making 25-28k). I never claimed they were typical or “std”, or that “most” EIC recipients were of that type. Just wanted to show that there are times when that a $4000 tax credit is perfectly in line with their tax burden.
EITC MAY be able to result in a refund greater than their tax burden. It can definitely result in a refund greater than their federal income tax burden and their FICA burden. Add in the other various forms of taxes and this is far less clear. Still the possiblity exists so I agree with the “CAN” part of this statement. I would like to see evidence of the “often DOES” bit that you’ve been asserting since your first post in this thread.
Your claim is that the typical EIC benefit is of the “paid 0 taxes, got back cash” variety. This means EIC is more often welfare than not. Saying you claimed it was “flat out welfare” was overzealous, and I apologize. You didn’t claim “all” you claimed “most” and I should have preserved that distinction. I will endeavor to do so in the future.
I still challenge the assertion that the single mom with two kids and 10-14k per year in earned income(the conditions which get a single parent household the maximum benefit) is the “rather standard recipient of EITC”. Prove it.
Firstly, you should read the cite more closely. ~59% of the households(singles and the family varieties) in the lowest quintile don’t work at all. Of those households with a wage earner, 34.5% only have a single earner. The assertion that “most families at this income level are double income” is bunk. In fact, according to the census data, only 6.1% of households at this income level have more than one income. Tell me again why the income of a traditional family is so much less likely to fall within the(wider) range to get maximum EIC than the income of a single-parent family. Only this time leave off the bunk about most low-income families being dual income.
To take a broader point, no work, no earned income, no EIC. Cuts a pretty huge percentage of that lowest quintile out of the running before the word “go”. Of those families in the lowest quintile(and pretty much all single-mom, two children, 10-14k earners would fall into this quintile, agreed?), less than half of them would be able to qualify for EIC AT ALL(becuase they have no earners), let alone the maximum.
Since you liked my census cite so much you can check back there for a cite on page 18 about the effects of EIC. I don’t have a cite handy for the intent behind EIC, but I stand behind my assertion that the intent was to refund some portion of the tax burden which could not be handled by simply zeroing the Federal income tax liability. So far it seems to be having exactly that effect.
Enjoy,
Steven
Pronouns. Hate pronouns. Let’s clarify this bit
To take a broader point, no work, no earned income, no EIC. Cuts a pretty huge percentage of that lowest quintile out of the running before the word “go”. Of those families in the lowest quintile(and pretty much all single-mom, two children, 10-14k earners would fall into this quintile, agreed?), less than half of the families would be able to qualify for EIC AT ALL(becuase they have no earners), let alone the maximum. This means less than half of the non traditional families would even POSSIBLY be in the, one-parent, 2 kids, 10-14k category.
Enjoy,
Steven
Fair enough.
I was making the point that the states with the highest sales taxes have thre lowest income taxes, and relating this to the larger question of just how great the non-federal income tax burden is.
Sure Mtgman, but we were talking about those families that DID qualify for EITC one way or another. Those that didn’t work at all don’t come into our picture, nor do millionaires, or Hottentots in Africa.
However, let us not get into a huge sidetrack here off the original point. We both agree that SOME EITC recipients get back more refund than Federal taxes (including Fica, etc). (We also agree that some do not, in fact they do owe FIT, and the EITC just reduces it). It does not really matter the exact % thereof. For those that DO get more refund that they pay in (federal) taxes- the EITC works like Welfare. Now, with the new Child credit maybe being refundable, that too could do this. Thus, in a sense- some “tax deductions are welfare”. Whether or not that “welfare” is a GOOD thing or not is also a hijack.
The point of the OP was that “tax deductions aren’t welfare as all they do is reduce the (federal) tax you owe”, and we NOW all agree that isn’t so- some can have 0 federal income tax liability and still get an extra refund of around $4000- which in effect is “welfare”.
**
I most certainly am not. Please show me where I made such an argument.
Yes. I understand your point. The fact is that it is completely wrong. A company’s customers bear its costs. It’s just that simple.
It does not matter where on the horse you put the weight, the horse is still carrying it. If it’s in the rider’s pocket, the horse is still carrying it.
I don’t see why obfuscating burden is a desirable end. Why would you want to make it unclear where the burden is carried?
You’ve said “Conservatives like to argue…” and put forth straw men, and you’ve claimed my position is perverse.
Yet you are the one is arguing that weights carried by a horse’s rider aren’t carried by the horse, and suggesting an obfuscatory tax scheme is desirable.
Is this how liberals like to argue?
Here is an analysis done by the GAO on EIC participation for tax year 1999. The interesting stuff starts on page 1 where they talk about the intent of the EIC.
This piece conflicts with the Census report which shows EIC as reducing income inequality due to both state and federal taxes. This discrepancy raises a few interesting questions. If the social security tax is all EIC is intended to offset then the numbers don’t line up. The amount of the credit is far greater than the employee’s share of the FICA burden. Is it possible the Feds agree with jshore that employees also bear the cost of the employer’s share of FICA? That would go very far towards explaining why payroll taxes on 10-15k of earned income recieve a high credit.
I tend to think this is an overly simplistic description of the EIC and the intent behind it. I have a couple of reasons for this. Firstly, FICA doesn’t scale according to number of children and the EIC does. If EIC was strictly intended to reduce the burden imposed by FICA then it would scale in the same way FICA scales. The FICA burden is trivially easy to calculate for various income levels and a single column table would match up perfectly with the fica burden. The EIC scales both with income and family size. Why? The only explination that makes sense to me is that it is designed to provide relief for tax methods that also scale with family size.
My second reason is Occams Razor. The GAO cite is a summary of participation in the EIC and this is a one-sentence introduction intended to be presented to someone familiar with the topic already. I think it was just sloppy writing on the part of someone assuming a certain level of knowledge in their audience. A concise definition of the intent behind EIC wasn’t given because the audience is expected to already know the intent behind it(after all, it is addressed to a congressman on the ways and means committee. They can be expected to have familiarity with this topic). That definition doesn’t match up with the implementation, nor the effects. I’d guess that description is overly simplified and it should be discounted.
Anyway, there is another interesting point on page 4. Tables of how much money was claimed by the various eligible households. A total of ~21 Billion was claimed. ~9 billion was claimed by households with two children. No info was given on the traditional or non-traditional status of these households. Still I would guess that single parent households make up a subset of this number so the single parent, two children, 10-14k families claimed some fraction of ~9 billion out of ~21 billion claimed. Some, not sure how large, part of less than half of the payout.
I maintain the EITC is intended to offset some of the tax burden imposed by the states. The EITC is not strictly a federal(income and FICA) tax credit. It is a credit issued through the federal tax infrastructure(the IRS) intended to reduce the tax burden, no matter what teir of government imposed it(state or federal), on low-income individuals. If it exceeds the total tax burden across the various teirs of government and the indirect taxes people pay as part of living then that specific case might be considered welfare. Although this is possible, in theory, the number of actual instances seems vanishingly small. The single parent with 2 kids making 10-14k per year would probably qualify, but total tax burden is a bitch to calculate. We’d never know how much of that credit was overage beyond the tax burden they actually carried. Since this group is such a small population I’d suggest we not worry about it and say that the EIC, in general, is not welfare. It actually IS a refund that approximates the tax burden of a large percentage of low-income working families.
Enjoy,
Steven