If the government wants a tax to be paid they need to make it simple and unconditional. If there are loopholes or ways to legally avoid it, they will be discovered and people will take advantage of them.
> If there are loopholes or ways to legally avoid it, they will be discovered and people will take advantage of them.
Most loopholes take a certain amount of time and effort to exploit, so they only break even if you are above a certain income level. You don't "write ↑ ↑ ↓ ↓ ← → ← → B A on your 1040, collect $200." That's never how it works. It always takes effort to set up the necessary "excuses," this effort can be expressed as a dollar amount, and your dollar savings typically apply in proportion to your overall income, so a given loophole works AMAZINGLY WELL if you are ultra rich, ok if you are super rich, meh if you are rich, and it has negative expected value if you are not rich.
This is true for many things in life. Look for things expressed as a rate rather than a dollar amount. Then ask "what if the dollar amount that multiplied the rate was really big?"