Factually incorrect. It is not uncommon.

The most common way people do this is to restructure their compensation as a way to avoid slipping into a higher tax bracket. Less salary more benefits.

Some people that receive awards with money (i.e. Nobel award) donate that money to charity to avoid the taxes.

And I know of a few people that have turned down overtime as they were getting close to losing tax credits and therefore actually losing money overall for earning more. 2 married professions in the Wash DC area. (strange how 250K is a millionaire now). I admit it is possible that if you did their taxes they may still have come out ahead but the progressive nature of the tax system means that it was not rewarding enough to be worth it.

Lasers and beam weapons generate too much heat to be useful in space given our technology. An interesting discussion of this topic a few year back came up with the following: When the space shuttle launches and reaches orbit the bay doors must open so the ship can begin to dissipate heat. That high in the atmosphere heat is dumped by radiation not by conduction. If the doors can not open the shuttle would need to immediately land. So in space proper the heat from laser weapons would prohibit their use. As such the most practical weapon for future combat would be a missle as the ships would probably start too far apart for direct projectile weapons. Finding a ship in space would only require having a heat vision system. It would be very hard to sneak up on someone, more a matter of them not looking for another ship. Heat seeking missles would be a default choice. Possibly this could be like old sub warfare, shoot a torpodo/missle then try to go silent/cold to throw off the enemy shots. Deploying some noise makers/heat decoys.