America 's tax code is the country 's main mechanism for redistributing income . Yet it is a tangled mess , increasingly reliant on regressive taxes , such as the payroll tax , and full of subsidies that benefit rich people while reducing economic efficiency .
But they argue that with strong rules - possibly by reducing the credit for " new " companies , or by requiring a company 's overall wage bill to rise along with its work force - the proposal could minimize such abuse .