it's drilled in to us repeatedly as children and young adults, a fundamental misunderstanding of how it works. it doesn't help that tax payment is unnecessarily complicated to create an industry of tax preparers who lobby to keep the process unnecessarily complicated. so you end up with working people in their 40s who literally have no idea how any of it works, but just repeat anecdotes from others as though they are facts.

I sat in a college level basic law course where the in house counsel for a public agency just straight up lied about estate taxes, with complete conviction.

if you keep everybody ignorant and confused about policy you can advocate for reforms that don't fix anything.