This article is not so far off if you limit it strictly to federal income tax. For example, I have six children. My wife stays at home. I make enough that I am

This article is not so far off if you limit it strictly to federal income tax. For example, I have six children. My wife stays at home. I make enough that I am well above the 50K referenced in the article, but by the time I deduct interest on my home loan, I'm much closer. I don't pay any federal income tax. I get back everything that is withheld, and even more than that. I get what is called the "Additional child tax credit" which basically means that whatever portion of the Child Tax Credit is left over after wiping out the taxes I owed, I get back as a credit which ads to my refund. This more than compensates for any state income tax and property taxes. It does not, however, come anywhere near compensating for FICA and Medicare, which are real taxes, plain and simple, and of the worst kind: In my age group, I will never see the benefit of these dollars which they steal from me today. Anything I would have paid in federal tax is dwarfed by it. There are no deductions, no exemptions. Even if I get the paltry SSI checks when I retire, the dollar will have lost so much value that the benefit is a mere trifle compared to the taxation that "funded" it. The only good thing I can say about FICA and Medicare is that they are a flat tax, or even a regressive tax since the highest earners do not pay it on all their income. It also does not compensate for sales taxes, nor for all the gas tax I pay, the cigar luxury tax (75% here in MN, and that's on top of the SCHIP taxes), and thousands of other hidden taxes contained in the prices of the products that I and my family consumes. And to use this fact as an excuse to tax middle to low-income families even more - shameful.