When you live in Cook County, Illinois, that’s when.
The other day I went to Home Depot to buy a faucet for the kitchen sink. The stated price was $64.00 Add the Illinois state sales (puchase) tax and the Cook County sales (purchase) tax and the total is $72.00 Now, being in the 25% Federal Income Tax bracket I will need to earn $90 in order to make a $72 purchase.
So there you have it. The new math. 
Being one of our resident math geeks, I even looked to see if there were two bases where 64 base X = 90 base Y
Doesn’t come out. It’s the same as finding an integral solution to 6x + 4 = 9y where x > 4. But 6x is always a multiple of 3, so 6x + 4 never is, and 9y always needs to be a multiple of 3
Here ends the math geekiness.
That was my first thought as well.
Being a computer geek the next one was how easy this problem would be for 64 = 100. We computer geeks have a particular fondness for radixes based on powers of 2.
Yeah, but now you don’t pay taxes.
64 = 90 when the bomb will be going of in 64 seconds. Anything extra can be ignored.
McGruber!
It’s even worse than you thought. If the Federales are taking 25% of all the money you make, then you need to earn $96 to afford your $64 dollar faucet, not $90. And you haven’t even factored in state income taxes, social security, property taxes and the like. If you’re paying 25% of your taxable income to the IRS, then you’re well past the 25% tax bracket, having around $186,000 in taxable income. (Tax brackets don’t work how you think they do.)
Or did you mean that you’re making between 32 and 83 thousand dollars per year and your effective tax rate is between 13.8% and 20.3%? In that case, the cost of your faucet would be somewhere between $83.50 and $90.
So… you make ninety thousand dollars a year and just figured out that you have to pay taxes? I’d say you should hire a good CPA.
I know of a situation where 65 is effectively equivalent to 97, though.
ASCII codes for letters where case is irrelevant, “A” = “a”. For that matter, 66 is effectively equivalent to 98, and so forth
The geekiness never ends, pal. It just evolves.
If you’re in the 25% tax bracket the feds are not taking 25% of your income. The percentage they take varies depending on how much you make, but it will never even come close to 25%, even before you start considering deductions, exemptions, and credits.
Checking my own numbers, I’m in the 17% bracket, but only pay 6% of my income in taxes. In the 25% bracket, I’d doubt you’d pay more than 15% tops – and most likely considerably less.
Psst… Post 7. In the 25% tax bracket you pay 13% at the low end and 20% at the high end.
With all due apologies to the math geeks/wizards/geniuses/etc. the point I was trying to make is that all these taxes are killing us! My cipherin’ may not be accurate but it all boils down to this: You don’t get to keep all you earn, and you are, in effect, charged a fee to spend what you have left. The power of your money is drastically reduced and it’s getting worse and worse. My minor purchase of $64 ($72+) is just a representation of what is happening on a larger scale. I don’t have the patience (or obviously the financial skills) to discern the exact hit we take on our finances but, as was pointed out above, we are getting screwed coming and going. All the taxes, fees and charges levied by the government are breaking our backs. But because they are not “in your face” we are complacently paying them without realizing the damage. Own a car? You have to pay for the license plates, the city sticker, the title, the sales tax. And that’s without even driving it! Want to drive it somewhere? Fee for the driver’s license, tax on gasoline, tolls, and og forbid you should drive too fast or park where you shouldn’t. I could go on and on but this is already beginning to sound like a pit post so I’ll let it go at that. Maybe some of you more detail oriented people could do an actual study of earnings vs. I think economists call it real wages. It could be very, very interesting.
Oh, boo hoo. Americans crying about income taxes. That always gets me almost as sympathetic as Americans whining over gas prices. 
(Marginal rate of 52% on income tax, gallon of regular fuel approximately $10 or so, give or take. And STILL some Swede or Dane can sweep right in here and outdo me. :))
But seriously - is this since the new administration? I mean, I’ve got my holiday to the US coming up next month, and I don’t want my Eurofriendly shopping experience spoiled by your local taxes!
Hmm, good old America, complain about taxes when they are low compared to much of the industrialised nations.
It’s a balance, what do you want out of your system, I will never be bankrupted by healthcare charges, I can’t be sacked without good reason, and if I end up on welfare, at least I have a survivable, if very low, income.
I also get more holidays 30 days plus public holidays, I work fewer hours than many Americans, we get a years maternity leave, etc etc.
I all costs though, so out taxes are very much higher, and I don’t get the choice, its taken off me before I get it.
One way or another, it’ll cost you, either in taxation or insurance, that’s how it is - suck it up dude.
When you do drive somewhere, don’t you normally drive on asphalt or concrete roads? Notice those road signs and traffic signals? Where do you think the money for those roads came from?
What about the schools where you learned to read and write? Where did the money for them come from?
Boo hoo. If you pay 25% tax that’s not a real problem. Some people don’t know when they are well off.
First off, I really wish that they would take all my taxes up front (with my pay). (So no additional sales tax, property tax, etc.)
On top of that, don’t tell me what my salary is, tell me what it is after deductions. Then I never need know how much is going to the government to support the roads/disabled/hospitals.
I know I would be happier if I were ignorant of it.
No, they aren’t. Expressing discomfort is not the same as dying. Our taxes have consistently been lowered for the past fifty years, so obviously they’re not all that bad now.
i agree, for mee it would have cost 64 x 1.19 (19% sales tax)= 76.16/0.58 (am in the 42% tax bracket)=131.31; so the new 64 is 131.
note: I do realize I only pay this much tax on part of my salary, but still…
Are you sure that it’s the taxes that are killing you? I note that you’ve failed to factor in the value of any services offered by the government, such as national defense, air/water/food quality, law enforcement, roads, bridges, bus/rail service, trash collection, unemployment insurance, public schools, public universities, scientific research … Unless you’re pretty damn rich, the value of these services substantially exceed what you’re paying in taxes.
I think this is the point. It’s not accurate.
Actually, by pooling your money with everyone else’s money, its buying power is enhanced and we all get to enjoy things that we would not be able to buy on our own.
You haven’t proven that it is the taxation that is breaking your back. To do that you would have to show that in a world without all this taxation: (1) You would be making the same salary (and there’s no guarantee of that), (2) Your overall costs would be the same or lower (I’m guessing they would be a lot higher), and (3) that this would be true for everyone else as well (how many of us can build our own roads and drinking water systems?).
But still, that’s therefore a meaningless number. You don’t pay 42% of your income in income tax, so the new 64 isn’t 131.
In fact, even the OP got his math wrong. If you’re paying 25% income tax, Peanuthead, a $72 purchase requires $96 in earnings (96 x .75 = 72.) And if you’re in the 25% bracket, you’re almost certainly paying far less than that in terms of your actual rate.