Covered Calls seem terrible for the average retail investor. Let me know if I'm thinking about this wrong.

1. You are severely capping your upside gain and potentially risking a large tax hit if you get liquidated. If you're up enough on your stock the question is less do I want 1k for my 1k in stock and more do I want 800 for my 1k in stock because of taxation.
2. In the reverse case where the stock takes a nosedive you can't "cut your loser" like you would with a traditional company. Because there's still a massive risk that if elon mush decides to take a stake or the shoe company randomly pivots to AI that the share price explodes. If that happens and you tried to cash out at a lower price then you still owe the contract 100 shares. You could repurchase the the call at a lower price but you're still down at that point.

TLDR: Covered calls limit upside gain and force you to ride out downturns for pennies on the dollar.