[pyoung]

One of the main arguments in favor of a negative income tax is that it would require less bureaucracy, not more. With the tax, you could just let the IRS handle it, whereas with UBI you would probably set up another agency, similar to social security, to handle it.

For what it is worth, from an economic perspective, the two ideas are basically identical. In a very hypothetically scenario: If someone gets a UBI of $500 a month, and then makes $500 in income with a 20% tax, than they would net $900 for the month. With an NIT, you would design it so that they get a tax credit of $500 per month, and then every $500 in income reduces their tax credit by 20%. So that same person would get $900 of the month.