I feel that “outgroup dumb” is shitposting but it’s from a real poll.
https://today.yougov.com/politics/articles/5057-understanding-how-marginal-taxes-work-its-all-part
If you ever wanted proof that a population that doesn’t understand math allows the billionaires to take advantage of them here it is. This is why education systems are under attack, because if you understood how taxes work you’d more likely support higher tax rates for the rich.
I think this is at least partially the result of intentional propaganda. It benefits the elite greatly if a lot of Americans are screaming against higher top tax rates due to this faulty logic. There are also a lot of anecdotes of people not accepting higher paying job offers or promotions within their company, which also benefits the business owners.
https://youtube.com/shorts/-621rVJvUdY
Mr. “Population collapse is the biggest threat to the world.”
Maybe it’s just the biggest threat to capitalism and your ROI. Why do you think he’s supporting the make everyone dumber party?
To be clear for those unaware, you pay the lower bracket rates for the amounts earned in that bracket and the higher bracket rates for the amounts earned above that bracket.
https://www.irs.gov/filing/federal-income-tax-rates-and-brackets
This is the problem. My partner doesn’t want to work OT because he thinks it will cost him more in taxes. I explain why that’s not exactly true, but I can tell he’s not interested. Financial Literacy in the US is abysmal.
Your partner is a moron who doesn’t understand relatively simple math.
Nah. He’s not an idiot. But he is impatient. He doesn’t handle paperwork or anything involving patience well. (ADHD)
I also think taxes in the US are intentionally over complicated and confusing. I don’t struggle with things like that but I can empathize with people who do.
I too have ADHD and am impatient (combined type, severe). Impatience is not an excuse for financial illiteracy. And a graduated income tax is not complicated. Deductions, credits, exceptions, etc are where it gets complicated. But if he thinks he’s losing money by making more money, then he’s stupid.
Reading your other responses, you’re right. Not knowing something doesn’t make someone stupid. Refusing to learn something when you find out you don’t know it, that’s what makes someone stupid. Willful ignorance is stupid.
At the very least, he should just admit he knows nothing about it and just take your word for it. Deferring to others expertise in areas you are weak is smart.
Strictly speaking the taxes in the US are not that complicated, but the credits, deductions and what not are. Still Tomato Tomato.
“you can’t make less money by making more money”
Oddly enough it kinda does. OT can make you pay out more taxes on that one check since withholdings are calculated by check. Basically the government/payroll system thinks you’re going to be making that every week so more taxes will be taken out.
In reality this only effects the size of your tax bill or return at the end of the year.
That’s what people see and exactly why they think they got kicked up a whole tax bracket.
The whole notion of “kicked up a tax bracket” is also a misleading thing. Only a piece of your income goes into the “new bracket”, all pay under the new bracket is taxed as they would have been used to.
Exactly, and it also depends on what withholding you have requested.
Run, if it’s not too late.
Nah. He’s not a bad person or a dummy. He just gets frustrated by bureaucracy and doesn’t have the patience I have.
It’s not the fear of bureaucracy that is concerning, it’s the lack of interest to listen to your sound advice on a relatively simple topic.
That’s fair. I appreciate your concern for me!
He’s not always like that. I didn’t mean to make him sound like a jerk. I just meant to relate to the topic of tax confusion with personal experience.
He had pretty severe ADHD and struggles with some topics. It’s okay! I deal with the money stuff and he cooks dinner. :)
Fair enough. Good luck on your journey!
You too!
We all have our weaknesses and faults. No need to dismiss every relationship due to imperfections.
Nah. There’s good people here and even the people who voted for this deserve to have their needs met, many of then are only personally responsible for a tiny fraction of the immense harm caused by the systems of power. And they may not have caused any harm in the first place if they lived in a place where people are always taken care of as well as is reasonably possible. there is immense pressure to shed empathy and embrace individualism and forego the many benefits of community such as efficient and effective collaboration, for example to prevent a disease from spreading or at least reducing the harm it causes. As many of us can see, especially obviously in the US, the goal and function of the system isn’t actually to stop causing harm in the first place, or even reduce the harm that must be caused for your society to function, the cruelty is often very much the point. Non-absolutely essential needs are less and less profitable to meet the less common it is to have the need, and the amount of wealth that can be extracted from the people with whatever need is the only thing that really determines what gets things done, and subjugation and not giving folks a chance to think critically and question their circumstances by completely overwhelming them with horrible information (including dis- or misinformation) about the world and making them think they’re threatened by whoever is opposing efforts to make line go up. Most folks don’t stand a chance without direct intervention and time spent with someone directly affected by the system in an obvious way, including possibly the person themselves.
At the very least I owe it to my family to stay and be as helpful as possible to the people who have supported me and hopefully others who don’t deserve what’s coming if a major effort of community organization doesn’t happen
it’s just not the US. I live in the Netherland and many people here think OT and bonuses are taxed differently, because they see a higher tax rate applied to it on their slip. They forget that their base salary covers multiple brackets and a tax credit. Thus has a lower average tax rate than their OT and bonuses which falls in their top bracket or even a bracket above.
By design
No, they teach you this in high school. These people are just dumbasses
Yes, everyone’s education is the same as yours.
Yeah, I definitely didn’t leave this in school. I know about it from reading articles on tax brackets. _(‘’)/
I’ve had jobs (more than one), where working OT would result in my paycheck take home pay being less than if I had not worked the extra hours. And that’s because it moved me into the next bracket, and more taxes were taken out. So why waste my time working OT?
I think you’re on the wrong side of the chart here.
try telling this to people who think government agencies pay taxes
That dude would have been hilarious if he wasn’t really so delusional. Not Sam, he was great. The dude that was convinced that government agencies get tax breaks.
What? Is this the onion?
Where i live we have a system where if you take sick days, they are paid 80%. 20% reduction applies only to the days you were sick. Once I got sick at the end of a month and took the last 3 days of the month and first 2 days of the next one off and my mother in law freaked out I’m about to loose 20% of 2 month’s salaries. She was and is still convinced that 20% deduction applies to a whole month worth of salary even if you take one day off that month. She almost never takes sick days and she works in a hospital… She self medicates and works with patients even when she has a transmittable diseases. Best of luck to those who have serious health problems and then get a fucking flu on top of everything from hospital staff. She is 60+ and reading the law to her doesn’t change her mind. A couple years ago she had more serious health problems and took a week off for the first time in decades, even after getting a paycheck reduced only by 5% and not 20% her perception of this issue didn’t change. She misunderstood that system once 40 years ago and she is going to take that misunderstanding to ger grave. Real world has no influence on her beliefs.
And they’ll also refuse to believe you when you try to explain it to them
These people are allowed to vote, and that is why we are all fucked.
And this why democracy won’t work. How can people votw in their best interests when they don’t know how basic taxes work
Hungary used to have a system, which worked like what the republicans imagined, which made “taxing the rich more” a widely unpopular move…
FWIW globally, there is the issue of “welfare traps”. Benefits for low income people are usually tied to income (or savings). Once income reaches a threshold, these benefits must be replaced with income. So a higher income may result in a net loss.
For someone outside the American tax system, can anyone put the difference in approximate numbers?
This all boils down to a common misconception about ‘tax brackets’.
To simplify, pretend there’s a 28% tax bracket up to 100,000 dollars, and a 33% tax bracket when you hit 100k. The first 100k is always taxed at 28%, no matter what you make, and it’s only the incremental amount that gets taxed heavier. So here in this example, that would mean tax burden would be 28,000.33 instead of 28,000.28. These are not the exact brackets or percentages, but it’s at least showing the right magnitude of increase versus total amount.
However, many people are “afraid” of bumping a higher tax bracket. They think the tax bill would go from 28,000.28 to 33,000.33. That the tax bracket bumps up all your liability. I remember growing up people saying “I have to watch out and not hit the bigger tax bracket, if I’m close then I need a big raise to make it worth it, or else the raise is going to cost me more than it would make me”. This a big driver of antipathy toward democrat tax policies, a belief that mild success will punish them, despite it only increasing on the incremental amount.
A lot of US benefits have “benefit cliffs” where making $1 more substantially reduces or even completely disqualifies a person from programs like SNAP (food stamps) or childcare subsidies or Medicaid. https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs
It’s not surprising people whose families are directly affected by, or who know people affected by, benefit cliffs think the lawmakers set up taxes the same way.
True, though if we are talking about tax bracket going over 30 percent, that would be at nearly 200k, so well above those thresholds too. Of course the numbers aren’t 28 and 33, but that is the closest threshold to the example.
To be more specific the first 100,000 isn’t taxed at 28%. The 44 to 100k range would be, but below that will be taxed at lower percentages. The first ~10k you make is taxed at 10%, and then it increases throughout.
If getting specific, there’s no 28 percent or 33 percent bracket, so these are all examples rather than real figures. I did make a comment using real numbers, same general magnitude but just more specific about the brackets.
OK, so it is similar to our system. And would probably in the range of cents or a few dollars then.
In exact numbers, 5 cents.
Your local tax system probably works the same.
this was pushed in the 80’s/90’s on conservative talk radio (iirc). strangely, it gets an ideological push from the phenomenon of income reduction resulting from lost welfare benefits as income increases. the brain correlates things irrationally.
When you are talking large income to larger income, that makes total sense, but are there limits for access to things like child tax credits where if you go over you are no longer eligible, causing significant increase (I just looked, and it’s at $200k single of $400k jointly, so unless you have A LOT of children, I suppose there wouldn’t be a huge effect)? Similar to people on government assistance who go from getting full assistance to getting nothing at a certain income level?
Hmmm, I better send a suggestion letter to the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) to put the tax bracket breakdown directly into your return with the amounts populated.
Hey, they give us a breakdown graph of where our tax is going, this seems like it’s within the realm of possibility.
I think sadly there are also many people here who have no idea how tax brackets work…
Thanks, Lemmy, now I’m “that Dad”. After reading this, I went to dinner with my two teens and one of their girlfriends, so of course I had to bring this up. All three have started working after school and will need to file their taxes this year so they need to know.
But holy crap is that a seriously uncool conversation
Tell me you don’t know how income taxes work without telling me you don’t know how income taxes work.
My question is who does their taxes then?
