> I feel pretty strongly that adding exceptions and loopholes to taxes only benefit wealthy people, which is the opposite of the intent.

It depends what the exception is.

If the exceptions are "we treat a form of income received disproportionately by the rich a 'not income' and tax it at a lower rate, and on top of that we add an extra tax on top of income tax on labor income, and cap the larger part of that extra tax, too, to avoid burdening high earners", that helps the rich, sure. But there are plenty of exceptions possible that don't do that.