🚀 go-pugleaf

 :   Only in the theory that tax breaks are subsidies "because
 :   everyone else has to pay in that much more".

No, that is not the theory.
The theory is that tax breaks are subsidies because
they result in the people they are given to having more
money, and the government having less, which is the EXACT SAME
result you would've gotten (in terms of where the buck stops)
if you had not given the tax break, but had given them a direct
appropriation.

 :    Tax breaks are not subsidies, but instead just the
 :   government taking less from someone.

What is this INSTEAD bullshit?
Taking less from someone IS a subsidy IF you have
the power to decide how much is vs. isn't taken ALL the
way around (which the government does).  In most circumstances,
takers and givers DON'T control it all the way around, so we
are used to thinking of these as different.  But powerful
legislative bodies are even more different than that.

 :  Now, it's clearly not fair for the government to 
 : take from _anyone_,

This is not clear at all.  It is clearly fair for the
government to take from those who have unfairly and illegally
taken from the innocent.  That is why convicted felons get sentenced.
Although it is less clear, it is also fair for the government to
take from those whom government services disproportionately benefit.

 :   it's even less fair for the government to take more
 :   from some and less from others, 

No, it is even less fair for the government to take the alleged
"same" amount from everybody, when everybody has completely
different circumstances and different abilities to pay.  Margaret
Thatcher got booted the hell out of 10 Downing St. for being
(despite her prinicpled intelligence on virtually everything else)
too big an idiot to see that.  The proximate cause of her failure
to win her own party's renomination for a third term as prime
minister was their fall to a near-record low in the polls as a
result of her ramming through a one-size-misfits-all poll tax on
EVERYbody.  This "same" amount was a much bigger hit for some
people than for others.

 :  especially in those cases where the more/less decision 
 : is one motivated by political connections.

That is ALL it ever CAN be motivated by.  Anybody who ever
alleged to you that it was motivated by something else
was Just Lying, if we are in the context of a republican
form of government.

 : In either case, though, an incident of the 
 : government _not_ taking from someone
 :   (as in that 20% you mention above) is very different
 :   from the government (taxpayers) paying that amount.

Prove it, fool.
I grant you two economies, with the same distribution of
taxes, corporations, corporate profits, and legislative
powers.  The only difference between them is the
agendas of their corporate lobbyists.  In one, the lobbyists
ask for (and get) a 10% reduction in taxes for their corporations.
In the other, they ask for (and get) a direct appropriation, as
a pure gift from the government, in the same amount.
All you have to do, if you can, is tell me, after I
remove the lid from the boxes, which economy is which.
You can't.
If they started out equal, they'll still be equal after the
introduction of this allegedly differing policy, because there
in FACT, NOT in theory, IS no difference between the policies.