The thing is? You don’t know that any more than I know it is. Nobody here has admitted to being a tax expert, and since every one of you is coming from a completely different background, it is possible that you are simply unaware of some combination of circumstances that would cause my husband and I to more or less come out even after the loss of my income. For example, we pay a state income tax - if you are one of the lucky ones living in a state without that, it could be that is the difference. I simply don’t know, and really neither do you. The only reason I bring it up in a discussion of taxes is that is the only real difference we saw, the amount of money my husband had to withhold in the past compared to now.
No other explanation that you can think of. It amazes me the number of (people who think they are) geniuses in here - how else could you come to that conclusion?
Unfortunately, there are lots of people who will swallow this sort of spam whole. I don’t know if it’s because we have more twits in our population than, say, 30 years ago, or if it’s because ripping people off has become essentially legal. Yet, we are supposed to feel sorry for folks who bought houses they just had to have known they couldn’t afford, or who ran up 10’s of thousands in credit card debt, and rush to help them get out of their financial holes. Which reinforces teh stupid…
How do you decide that any X amount of money is what is needed to stay alive in any one place? It seems like “stay alive” would mean quite a bit different things to a homeless bum and a couple with four kids.
You don’t have to be a tax expert to know that 100% number was something that was just pulled out of someone’s butt either. However, a moron might believe it and try to use it as “proof” of something…
I don’t have crayons, but I will try and use as simple words as I can.
If you think that a decrease in taxes made up for a $20K dollar reduction in income, then the combined tax rate on that $20K must have been 100%. If if were 50% for example, you would have seen a $10K reduction in after tax income. Is this really too hard for you to understand?
Simple answer: Her husband and her already lived below their means, so their quality of life stayed the same, which would only be possible if they were saving ~$20k compared to their previous lifestyle.
I’ve been trying to follow this, but it just makes my head hurt. Let me see if I have this right: curlcoat says that in the past, the family earned x+$20,000 before taxes. Now that gross income is only x, and there has not been any change in after-tax income.
Do you think the small increase in taxes is going to make anyone go broke? Moves cost money - do you think many would spend it or go to a worse place for a 1% increase in effective income? 90% tax rate, sure, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.
I didn’t see if it was resolved, but Starving Artist is absolutely right. “Rich” has to do with net worth and not income.
It’s sort of like asking, “I am paying $300/month for a Nissan Altima. Did I get a good deal?” You can’t possibly know the answer to that question unless I tell you the total purchase price, the term of the loan, the interest rate, etc.
Likewise, someone’s income this year, or even year to year, does not determine their wealth status. If I have ten million dollars in gold, but I took last year off to catch up on relaxing, am I poor?
As I’ve already said, not if they are getting richer too. But consider how most people would feel about making 1/2 of what their officemate makes (with roughly comparable skills and age) versus 1/10 or 1/100 of what the CEO makes. Though they should be made at the latter case, most people would be a lot more upset about the former one.
Mostly I’m speaking of the rich as a class. For particular people, we do make distinctions between the person who got rich and a raise from building up a company, creating jobs, and adding value, and the CEO who gets a big raise after laying off 10% of the company because the company just can’t afford the expense.
a is reasonable. b is an example of Joe the Plumber syndrome, where people whose chance of making it into the ranks of the wealthy are near zero support policies that actually hurt them because the rich wave that tiny chance in front of their faces, and many are optimists to the point of unreason. If a kid was flunking out because he spend all his time shooting hoops in order to make it as an NBA star, you’d think he was pretty dumb, right - unless some real coach said he had talent, and even that coach would tell him to do his damn homework.
Why don’t you try to respond to my initial scenario, which covers this?
Same way you decide on the poverty level. No perfect answer, of course. I’m arguing principles, not details. We both know that shacks in our neighborhoods cost as much as mansions in many parts of the country.
Even dumber than you say. On one hand we have mortgage professionals, with lots of sales backup, who have taken internal classes on the contracts and have done a ton of these every week, and on the other we have a poor guy, who isn’t making much, might not be proficient in English, and who struggled with math in high school. Equal power there, right? Or rather emacknight is claiming the poor guy has all the power in the negotiation.
No, regardless. You already agree with me that an office worker feels no better or worse if the janitor suddenly does better or worse; I’m mystified as to why you disagree about whether we should feel no better or worse if someone rich suddenly does better or worse. I mean, if you disagreed about both, I’d merely think you were (a) twice as wrong, but (b) consistent; why the split?
Well, yeah. It’s the “roughly comparable skills” part that would stick in my craw, because I’d want to be compensated the same for doing the same work, and would make a case for it as best I could. As you put it:
So long as (a) is reasonable, I’m content with it. As for (b), remember that I was replying to your smaller-stakes scenario: Iwasn’t talking about Joe the Plumber striking it rich, I was talking about a winner-take-all promotion that comes with a raise for one. And I’ve been in that situation, as the guy who felt he was passed over for someone less deserving, and promptly tried to find out how to game the system to get the next such promotion.
Do we? All you said was that the rich are getting richer at the expense of the folks who aren’t.
Oh, sorry; emacknight beat me to it, and I didn’t get around to writing “emacknight beat me to it.” That said, why don’t you respond to what I wrote? You say the poor pay for it by sending their children off to fight in wars; I say many of 'em don’t, and so ask why you’re bringing it up.
Well, there’s your problem right there - lack of reading comprehension. I have said that there appears to be no difference in our lifestyle, I have never given any dollar amounts other than a loss +/- $20K from when I quit working. I have no specific information on the difference in the amount of taxes we paid then as opposed to now, nor do I know the exact numbers on our incomes then as opposed to now. So, the 100%, or the 50% are just numbers folks are pulling out of their butts to try to “prove” me wrong.
I did try to guesstimate using the tables here, and it looks like we are paying about $10K less in fed income tax, maybe even less. My guesstimate on state income tax is about $2K less, and SS at least $3K less. So even if I’m way off on the fed tax, we are still paying quite a bit less in tax than we were.
Remember, my whole point was about perception. Four years down the road, even if I could go back to work, neither of us see any value in it, there simply has been no appreciable affect on us due to the loss of my income. It may only happen in couples with our particular set of circumstances - no kids, low bills, one person making significantly more than the other.
No, not even close. It helps if you only read what I post, rather than what others are trying to make it out to be.
Ah. I’m still not sure it’s an equitable way to approach it tho.
So you come into a tax thread to say that you don’t care that you’re not making as much money. Well, no, originally you said you didn’t make any more money, which was just simply factually wrong. Now you’re saying it doesn’t make a difference in your life. Ok, who cares? Most people like more money and notice it. You apparently don’t. What statement do you feel like you’re making about the tax system?
Jesus. I said exactly the same thing thruout - that despite what you all may want to think, there may be a decent number of people out there just like us, who find that it simply isn’t worth it to work the overtime or commute for hours to make enough money to get bumped into another tax bracket. Despite how much you seem to love our tax system, it screws those over a certain income level, which is no where near rich. Once you do start getting up into that “rich” area, (whatever income level an individual decides that is), it is no wonder they spend so much effort trying to hide their true worth to see if they can lower their taxes. Even if someone is making $4M a year, having to send 30% just to the IRS has got to hurt.
Every year we pay too much to the IRS, the state income tax and everything else. Every year more rich people say fuck this noise and hide as much as they can, and more of the middle class decide owning a McMansion isn’t worth working harder to pay out more tax and hope to have enough at the end to make the mortgage. And all you do is say “we should be taxing the rich more”. You keep punishing people for succeeding, some of them are going to quit trying - maybe that’s where our middle class is going? Shrug.
You are stupid. There is no such thing as getting “bumped” into a new tax bracket. There is never a situation in which you earn an extra dollar, and then lose money because you crossed a bracket line. See the OP, or 30 or 40 other posts in the thread, for an explanation as to why this is the case.