I used to work for a company that gave year end bonuses. However, whatever bonus I received 40-50% was confiscated by the government for whatever bullshit reason. It was deceptive. The company would say, We are giving you a $5000 bonus! But I would only get a percentage of that amount.
It was an "us" bonus. My good work and innovation gave me a bonus, as well as the government 'bonus' which I earned for them. Just my small contribution to the 150 billion dollars Obama/Jarrett sent to their buddies in Iran.
It is weird to get 'punished' by the government for earning a bonus. "Dats mines money! You didn't build that!"
Think of all the people out there who basically work for tips. Their wages are crap, it's the tips that pay the bills. Now consider what a tip is. It's a gratuity, a 'thank you' for service, from the providee to the provider. If the IRS doesn't think enough of that 'thank you' is claimed as income, according to some formula they have, they will make up some number and tax the income they claim someone made whether they did or not--and the burden to prove they did not falls on the employee (or in rare instances, their employer, too)--forcing the taxpayer to prove innocence, and prove a negative (they didn't make
that much money), damn the 5th, the 14th, and due process.
Of course, the little people who make those tips seldom can afford the costs of taking it up as a legal matter--the IRS has unlimited money, by comparison, to feed lawyers and can bankrupt them into a 'settlement' where people who didn't make that much money are forced to pay the taxes on it anyway, and a penalty to boot.
What I want to know, simply enough, is how an exchange of my time and skill for whatever (cash, chickens, a weaner pig, car parts) becomes taxable income. It isn't a net gain, except in that I now have something more desirable to ME than the time I spent in exchange for it. It's an exchange, value for value, no net gain.
If I had invested $1000 and without spending any more time or effort recovered $1200 because the value of my investment had increased, then there would be $200 in income there, because I didn't just exchange my time and effort for the fruits of someone else's time and effort. There would have been a net gain.
