because in the scheme described the effective tax on your income is positive (the more you earn, the more is transferred away) as opposed to negative (the more you earn the more is transferred to you).
What you are describing might intuitively sound like what a negative income tax should mean, had you never heard of a negative income tax before, but that is not what a negative income tax is. A negative income tax, which is a name for a type of benefit system, does not mean that people are literally negatively taxed, regardless of their income.
