I'm pretty sure that is actually the case in the US tax system. A US taxpayer's tax burden cannot be less than 0. It doesn't have to be that way, but to make it so requires a more fundamental change to the US tax system.
https://www.irs.com/articles/refundable-vs-non-refundable-ta...
Tax breaks and one's total tax obligation are two different things.
>(Also, lots of non-rich people pay taxes, even if you only mean personal income tax.)
A lot of people think they pay taxes, but they don't. And we'd need to define rich to really reach an agreement on the truthfulness of that statement. According to the CBO [1] (table 1 on page 31), households in the lower three quintiles of income are not net tax payers at the federal level. The gap in what they pay and what they receive in services is large enough that it offsets state and local taxes.
Reviewing the table I referenced above, I would agree that lots of non-rich people pay taxes. But the majority of non-rich people do not.
[1] https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114th-congress-2015-...
What about the value the owner of a retail store gets from the interstate system?
Only counting direct benefits in this calculation is absurd.
That's, of course, completely untrue in a world where refundable credits are a thing. Tax bills are not limited to non-negative numbers.
(Also, lots of non-rich people pay taxes, even if you only mean personal income tax.)