But as more and more taxpayers fall into the clutches of the Alternative Minimum Tax, and credits and phase-outs proliferate, this old-fashioned ploy doesn't always work.
Congress couldn't have given more than fleeting thought to time when it added things like education credits and alternative minimum taxes to the tax code.
Some of this inequality was addressed by the Labour governments through tax credits and the minimum wage, but the share of income going to the top 1% continued to rise inexorably, driven by the financial sector.