I hear you. We made those same choices (except private schooling) and get nothing from FAFSA. However, we do get tuition subsidized by the lottery players of Georgia (voluntary taxation of poor people to pay for the middle class to send their kids to college).
And I can beat you on one thing - my car is 10 years old! (My wife’s is 6).
Pretty sure tuition, at least, is deductible. Sounds like you need a better accountant.
For college, maybe, but not for K-12 which is what I think she is referring to.
i’m not aware of any respected economist who will claim that tax bracket shifts have more than diddly squat of an effect on wage rates.
p.s., you do understand that taxation is marginal, right?
Wages will change, take home won’t.
There’s a certain minimum that a person needs to survive. If you raise taxes on him, he’ll die unless he asks for a raise. As such, he’ll ask for a raise (or for government handouts). If, instead, you lower taxes on him, then all a business has to do is find the guy who is willing to work at a survival rate, and the market adjusts downward.
Now, since everyone wants to be making more money than the guy that they believe is worth less than himself, everyone wants a take-home greater than all of those people, proportionate to how many times greater their job is worth. That proportion hasn’t changed. Given time for the market to adjust, take-home values will end up the same. Prices might change, wage might change, government subsidies might change, but the basic necessities of the situation will necessitate that everyone bend to move money in such a way that it gets where it needs to be to allow the take-home to stay as it was. Some of that take-home might be directly supported by the government, rather than paid as wage, but it will come.
Sounds like you need to educate yourself:
“If your MAGI is not more than $65,000 ($130,000 if you are married filing jointly), your maximum tuition and fees deduction is $4,000. If your MAGI is larger than $65,000 ($130,000 if you are married filing jointly), but is not more than $80,000 ($160,000 if you are married filing jointly), your maximum deduction is $2,000. No tuition and fees deduction is allowed if your MAGI is larger than $80,000 ($160,000 if you are married filing jointly).”
I’ve never understood why people work hard enough to get money, but then complain when the government doesn’t help them. You intentionally fought to not need the help, and now want it anyways? Why?
Sure, if you are really close to line, there might be people on the lower side that are better off than you. But if not, you’re still better off than all these people you’re jealous of.
If you want your government subsidy so bad, intentionally limit your wages. What, you can’t live at the lifestyle you’re used to, and thus don’t want to do it? Then don’t complain. To get that lifestyle, you chose to give up the government handout.
I don’t want their help as much as I want them to let me keep the money I earn!
I looked over the FAFSA form and I don’t see that they ask about assets. The focus seems to be on income. If two families earn the same amount and one family saves while the other lives beyond its means, does FAFSA treat them differently? I don’t see that on the form, but I have only taken a quick look. If the system does penalize families for retaining wealth, that’s not much different than what Medicaid does when a person enters a nursing home–if you’re asset poor (regardless of your lifetime income) they’ll take care of you at relatively little cost, but if you’ve got assets, you need to jump through serious hoops to protect them.
BTW, I paid my own way through college by holding down a job and incurring debts I had to repay, and I have no kids of my own. So I’m not wild about paying to subsidize higher education for your kids so they can enter the workforce and compete for my job.
I see it from a different perspective. It’s not that people want government help despite not needing it, but that since they’re being taxed to help out all of the losers (I mean sub-prime people here), they’re looking the for the best way to leverage the circumstances. That’s purely rational thought.
It would probably be a very minor stimulus, since lower-income people would a have a bit more money to spend.