[zozbot234]

It's a wash. If you "give the money to everyone equally", you'll just be clawing it right back by raising taxes on higher-income folks. Theory suggests that you'll want to phase out the aid quite aggressively as income increases (though not by anything near 100%) because this is where the tightest constraints on spending are no longer binding, so the potential benefit is not that worthwhile.

[medvezhenok]

The result is the same but the details matter.

One is having to prove you are under threshold (documentation, paperwork etc) - the other, everyone gets it, so much less overhead for the poor (the overhead is on the side of the people who can afford it - the VAT tax or whatever is on the other side)

It’s about who has to deal with the paperwork

[zozbot234]

This is a tax credit, so there ought to be very little paperwork involved other than filing for your taxes - I agree that this kind of arrangement makes sense. It's just that describing it as a subsidy for lower incomes is inherently fairer and more accurate than trying to make it into something "universal".