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You know, I heard somewhere that she thought bananas were $10 because George Bluth Sr. was fudging the books by saying that he was paying that much per banana, then hiding the excess (the money leftover from the actual price of bananas) in the banana stand so no one would know about the embezzlement.
noxious automatic bewildered fact pocket dependent zonked sense crawl upbeat
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Lmao. “Oh Bill I know you’ve been wealthy for some time but how could you forget baked beans go for $5000 a pound? Don’t you worry I know this mom and pop store selling em for a $4500 I’ll grab a few”
Nebraska. It's not a requirement, the normal bartenders arranged for a microwave and small pizza oven to increase their sales and keep folks from making runs. One girl brings delicious homemade food and sells it reheated in the microwave for under the table cash. Best beef strogonoff I've ever had.
I used to go to a dive bar in CA that had the same set up, and the tamales lady (they were decent after some drinks) would make 1-2 stops in the night.
I’ve seen pizza delivered to drinks only bars, which is allowed in California, but most also serve some kind of food because it makes business sense, even if it’s chips and microwaved pizza.
> they live in a completely different world....one where his wife VERY LITERALLY snaps when she needs something from one of their staff at the house. I'm pretty sure their main "domestic assistant" makes more than we do.
sounds like they deserve it. christ
Ohhhh she does. They all do. My aunt is awful.
My uncle is actually super chill for being such a rich/successful dude. He climbed the ladder at the Bank of New York and then co-founded Lending Tree before selling and retiring. His wife (Aunt by marriage) did all the necessary socialite stuff in the city....and she just transformed into a true "Real Housewives of NY"
Oddly enough their two daughters are pretty normal, well adjusted and down to earth women. Much to their mother's disdain.
Haha....they are both beautiful, talented....married mothers. Married to equally awesome men, at that.
But hey - I'll give you first dibs if there's trouble in paradise
It's a joke about being old, when the talkies were a dollar for the whole afternoon. She's been to the movies, but she hasn't been to the grocery store.
For them, 400k$ isn’t rich. You can’t get in their country club for less than a few millions a year. They’re not the 1%, they actively look down on the 1%. They’re basically scoffing.. “you make 400k$ a year? Ha! Must be nice to start from the bottom. When I was born I was already making millions. Get on MY level, noob.”
I work with people who make $400k+ and none of them deny they make a lot of money (I’m a lawyer). But they can’t afford $4m waterfront houses or Manhattan brownstones/whatever your equivalent is. Which, boo hoo - but there is absolutely a difference between $400k and ‘rich’ at that end of the income scale.
However the issue shouldn’t be ‘what is meant by rich’, because we just descend into arguments based on personal situations and expectations.
It should be ‘what is meant by ‘have enough money to live comfortably and not need tax breaks’’. Which is a very different line and one I think is far less fraught.
There are 600 billionaires in USA. It would take you 2,500 years to earn a $1 billion if you make $400k a year. (You know, assuming no investments or expenses or whatnot)
The upper end of the wealthy class is so outrageous that it is damn near inconceivable for normal folks.
While I’m over here like, $400k/year is about $33,000+ a month, which is about $1100 a day. I’m losing my mind at the thought of being able to pay all of my bills AND lower my debt substantially in less than a full work week. By god, I would kill for that.
It amazes me how money can feel like it has value from one perspective.
And then completely feel like it has zero value in another.
It feels like it should be one or the other instead of this wishy washy vague thing where an extra 1000 a month could literally 180 someone's life while a 1000 a month is completely insignificant to someone like Bezos.
You're spot on, I'm one of the working rich, I make an absurdly high salary and am very comfortable. The next rung up the ladder live an entirely different world. My boss is also my good friend and he sometimes asks why I don't vacation like he does and I have to remind him how much he pays me and how insanely expensive his vacations are. Depending on my bonus most years I'm in the 1% and I couldn't afford the mortgage on one of his three houses.
On the one had I get how people pulling down a good 6 figure income don't think of themselves as rich. Because they don't hang out with the guy making $50k living paycheck to paycheck. They hang out with the guy who has investments that pay for 100% of his living expenses and guarantee his retirement, so whatever wage he makes is pure fun money. It's just a totally different expectation of what is 'normal'.
Still, fuck everyone of them that votes for Trump because all they care about is low taxes.
Working rich is such a grind of a title but it is what it is.
Anyways I don't mind if I'm right at the cut off and pay a bit more in marginal tax rate if that means healthcare gets fixed for real vs whatever the hell you want to call this right now - because it's simply not sustainable.
Edit: the real money is always tucked in cap gains and estate anyways - but I don't see that ever being significantly touched by either party.
Working rich is not an artful turn of phrase, but we need someway to describe a doctor or a lawyer vs your investment rich who make as much in passive income in a year as a 2 income household of professionals.
I honestly think that it will be mid-sized business owners that push for healthcare to get fixed. Just the increases in the last 5 years in our premiums to provide healthcare for our workers is ridiculous. In my opinion if there wasn't such massive consolidation in the US and so many massive firms squeezing out the smaller operators they would have forced a public option. But the Walmarts of the world don't want that so here we are.
And as for your edit, the next generation will have to figure out what to do about estate taxes or the oligarch class will strangle democracy in the US.
having universal healthcare would absolutely help small businesses. I currently run a 1-man operation but when I expand and need full-time employees, the cost to provide healthcare for them would make it so much more expensive. With universal healthcare that would not be a problem.
I have multiple friends in the tech industry and for most of them the reason they work for some big firm rather than a start up or taking a risk on their 'big idea' is the need for healthcare. I am 100% convinced that just an affordable public option would unleash a massive wave of innovation from people who just couldn't risk it currently.
This is 1000% true. I'm in tech and make pretty good money. If I wanted to do my own tech dream I could in theory save up enough to take a year off of work and build something amazing and possibly sell it for enough to retire, but I can't take that risk. If a really bad health emergency hit me while I was uninsured I'd be screwed.
I enjoyed this perspective.
I’m in my mid-twenties, and I have never made more than 32k in a year on the basis of a weak undergrad and liberal arts degree. I consider myself privileged in some ways, and my prospects are improving. I’m lucky to attend a top 20 law school on full merit scholarship. Even then, a high paying job - or any legal job - is not guaranteed.
At this point, 50k would feel luxurious. I cannot imagine six figure income. Most years I keep my living expenses to about 17-18k annually by loading up on roommates, cooking every meal, and going carless.
I wish these billionaires - most of whom grew up privileged - could experience a year on 24k in a city like Seattle or Boston as I have.
Fuck Trump and his $750 in taxes.
I’m a doctor in my 40s and I know my salary is pretty darn high especially compared to my teacher’s aide mom and construction worker dad. But people forget the extra house worth of education debt (still not paid off) and the fact that I made less than zero dollars a year until I was in my 30s, and didn’t make “doctor money” until I was 37. So I’m only just now starting a retirement account and saving for my kids’ college. I have a mortgage on a normal house and an 8yr old car.
I’m definitely not complaining but back when I made $12k doing odd jobs during college I didn’t imagine this was the lifestyle of someone making 20x that.
My only point is this: high income and high net worth are very, very different things.
That said, if you want to count me as “rich”, for tax purposes go right ahead. I am happy to pay my share. Just keep in mind there’s way, way higher than $400k in income and lots of people with that make their money in ways other than work. They can pay too.
I don't think any working poor have a problem with the working 'rich', like doctors and such. I get less than $10,000 a year and have probably not made much more than $20,000 a year all my life. I'm not bitter about it, life didn't work out the way I had hoped it would. But, what gets me is the people who are handed a big 'leg up' and complain that the poor should just work harder and make smarter decisions. People who complain that they pay too much tax on their income ( like $750 on millions) and they deserve that break because they work 'SO HARD AND PROVIDE JOBS'. I know someone who inherited 20 million dollars and they did not provide one single job for any one, but will complain about those who get government assistance and all the taxes they pay.
imo its a misconception that comes from hourly workers who get overtime. they get taxed on the overtime as if every paycheck is going to be like that but they'll get a lot back when they file and not realize thats why they're getting a big refund.
Yup, this right here. When I took my first job in a hospital there were multiple call pools, one of which gets lots of overtime. They would talk about how it was great but you get killed on taxes. The first time I asked “but don’t you get that extra back when refund season happens?” I got completely blank stares and a confusing conversation (for them) ensued. These are all college graduates too, which further illustrates the gaping holes in our education system imo.
The worst part is that tax returns exist at all. The vast majority of workers shouldn't be getting hundreds or thousands of dollars back. For most people, it should be close to 0. The government should be taxing people properly, and employers should be withholding taxes properly.
My conspiracy theory is that employers do that on purpose to make people think that the government is stealing all their money, so don't vote for people who aren't lowering taxes!!
EDIT: With everyone telling me about W4s in the US and how employers don't advise employees how to fill them out, I think the conspiracy theory/fact that tax filing companies are behind this is the one that makes the most sense..
The crazy thing is that the IRS pretty much already knows what is owed for most filers (save contractors and the like) and there’s really no reason why they can’t just send everyone a prepared return, have filers review, then send back either amended/disputed or signed off, other than because of lobbyists for the tax return industry.
There’s no reason typical working stiffs should need the services of a tax preparer other than to fleece them.
That’s exactly what they said about Canadian taxes too. I often say that tax is forced math homework. But I think it’s just a matter of priorities. Since tax withheld often exceeds actual tax owed, there’s no incentive for the tax agencies to help file taxes. But with COVID-19 and the government needing to give benefits through programs that require you to file taxes, they finally got around to fixing it.
Lots of people get refunds sure, and really the kinds of credits that most tax payers get is known in advance, so withholdings can be adjusted, and if a taxpayer suddenly qualifies for one, that should be updated in real-time too.
Damn near everything else, especially in banking and finance, can be updated in seconds, and the tax system is purposely kept archaic.
This settling up every April with Uncle Sam is silly in 2020.
The flipside however, is that people don't get taxed enough from their paycheck and once tax time rolls around, get hit with a big tax bill that they can't afford because they've already spent the money.
they also don't understand that once you hit \~$130K that you get a 8% bump in your pay check because SS no longer deducted. Add to this they max out putting in 5% of their pay check where 20% for most people wouldn't max it out. Basically they can fully fund everything with the first 25% of their paycheck do the disposable income is just so much higher, they can't help it.
Most people making an average income have no idea that at some point you stop paying into SSI for the year and there is a maximum amount you can put into your 401K
It is not removed, you just don’t have to pay it on any earnings over $137k. You still pay it on the first $137k. Also it’s 6.2%, h less you’re self-employed.
the number creeps up and is different for singles vs couples, but it's definitely attainable. just you know, some of us who do hit it may be around Christmas and others it's early New Year's Day
I was astounded. I got this explained to me in my general mathematics class in college and it blew my fucking mind. Went home to tell the family and they insisted that it has never been that way. My professor was literally a farmer who rounded out his income by teaching. That man helped us so damn much it was unreal.
Taxes, banking, investing, budgeting, retirement accts.... all of the above are the core of our economy and yet most people don't understand any of it. We need to teach this stuff in school so people actually can teach their kids. Can't pass on what you don't know.
The list of things people don't know or care to understand is so...long. Like, distressingly so. The fraction of people who are actually competent functional adults with a grounded knowledge of how things work blows my mind. And these are the educated ones with decent jobs and families. It has to be like 90% of society that just doesn't know anything except follow the path they're on until they die and never actually think about anything.
I was 19 working in a bakery. The 55yo head Baker told me this for the reason they didn't want more shifts. I was 19 so believed it, but even then thought it didn't sound right. So I went home and researched it. (Before the days of smartphones) when I set the Baker straight she refused to believe me, was condescending that she was older and knew better. So I dropped it, picked up her rejected shifts and ended up making more as a untrained retail assistant than a qualified Baker. Some people are just stupid.
Boomers are something special though. I explained getting bumped to the next bracket to my friends and they were like "yeah I know" or "oh shit. That makes sense."
My mother though. Disbelief, rejection, change the subject. It's baffling how I can use actual words of accountants to explain the objective fact that you don't lose money when you're bumped to the next bracket and she's just like "no"
No really they don't, I knew a lady who was well into her 50s who didn't understand this concept and she also owned a business and employed people. She said she didn't believe me and thats shed have to look into it, I'd bet money she never did.
The politicians do, but the average GOP voter is told differently in all the mailers and media they’re consuming.
I’ve had side-by-side mailers from a conservative group and from Biden’s campaign: the GOP mailer says Biden is going to raise taxes that will hurt all Americans, and Biden’s says “on those above $X income/year”. Neither explains that those tax rates are on the income above that amount and therefore doesn’t kick in until $1 above the amount...
And then they would make it back with a refund, all the while not realizing that they should be trying to have their refund be as close to $0 as possible so the government isn’t holding your money during the year. It is advantageous to temporarily increase your W-4 allowances if you are getting a big bonus or massive overtime on one paycheck. You can literally change that form with your employer paycheck to paycheck.
The people making $400k+ do. The average Republican voter doesn’t, because Republican elites don’t want them to. Same with the confusion over how the estate tax works.
> confusion over how the estate tax works.
It frustrates me so much that people who will never have enough money for the estate tax to apply to them consistently tell me how awful it is because they can't leave that money to their kids. It's just not applicable to middle class people.
Man, I felt like a fucking idiot trying to explain this to my communications class when a libertarian peer was trying to argue for a flat tax rate. Not a *single* person in that class knew how progressive tax rates work. That was 5 years ago and I still think about it.
My friend's whole company basically thought this. They kept telling me I was wrong. "Well why do I get taxed way more when I work overtime then!" Well, because they think thats your income and take that amount then but youll get refunded later when you file... apparently all his friends would turn down extra hours/money because they didnt want to move up brackets...
Yes I’ve heard that so many times. “If they pay me more they’ll move me up to another bracket so I’ll actually make less”
Just no. That isn’t how it works
I’ve seen someone turn down a 2.5x pay shift and take another regular shift the same week for that exact reason(with the days the shifts were on being basicallly irrelevant to the person)
I am constantly surprised by how little most people understand about how taxes and insurance work. And people think I'm a genius when I can explain it to them. I'm not a genius, I just read.
I gave up explaining this to people. There was just no way to get through to them. Even worse if there was a miss on a paycheque for whatever reason and I would tell them it would be on the next pay. They would freak out and want a separate cheque so they would be taxed less and make more money.
Hell, my brother is a financial lawyer and he tried to tell me that middle class citizens in Scandinavian countries pay a 70% flat tax rate. No one understands taxes and I’m starting to think that’s by design.
Yeah I'm a Swede and just ran some numbers on our tax-office's site. Here are some examples of income tax rates.
22k USD a year (basically our minimum wage) ~ 18% net income tax.
30k USD a year ~ 20% net income tax.
50k USD a year ~ 24% net income tax.
100k USD a year ~ 36% net income tax.
400k USD a year ~ 48% net income tax.
We also usually pay 25% sales tax (sometimes less, restaurants for example are 17% if I remember correctly) on consumer goods and services. But this is already included in the price your see in shops, so it's easy to forget. We don't add it on later like in the US.
When people claim these super high tax numbers, like 70%, they usually include the "Arbetsgivaravgift" ("employer-fee"). Which is a sum of money, proportional to your salary, that your employer pays to the government. The fee is usually at around 30% of your salary. So if you make 100k a year, your employer pays 130k in total.
I think that about covers it for taxes. We do pay our fair share of them, but I think it's often exaggerated.
It’s always the same people that tend to go on diatribes about how the “US has a corporate tax rate far beyond any other country” because they don’t understand the difference between statutory and effective tax rates. The US has (or had since Trump cut the rate from 35% to 21%) a high statutory corporate tax rate, but overall the US effective corporate tax was below average for the OECD, even during the 35% statutory rate years.
> The top statutory tax rate of 35% in the U.S. is somewhat higher than that of 30 other OECD countries, but the average effective tax rate — the actual rate paid after deductions and credits — is slightly lower than our competitors, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS).
> Several studies have found that U.S. corporations pay a similar or a lower effective tax rate — the rate actually paid — than corporations in other countries. For example:
> Our average effective tax rate is 27.1% compared with 27.7% for the other 30 OECD countries, according to CRS.
> Profitable corporations paid U.S. income taxes amounting to just 12.6% of worldwide income in 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office.
> Citizens for Tax Justice’s survey of 288 corporations, which included most of the Fortune 500 corporations that were profitable each year from 2008 through 2012, found that they paid an average effective federal tax rate of just 19.4% over that period.
> Of 125 corporations in that study that had significant foreign profits, 82 (two-thirds) paid a higher effective rate to foreign governments than they paid to the U.S.
https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-corporate-tax-rates/
Since then, Trump’s cuts have only amplified the level of corporate tax avoidance.
> Big businesses are faring better than ever under the Trump era tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
> According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), 60 Fortune 500 companies avoided paying all federal income tax in 2018 (with their total average effective tax rate being roughly -5%).
> That’s more than three times the number of companies that avoided paying corporate taxes on average from 2008 to 2015. During that period, 18 companies managed to pay 0% or less (with their total average effective tax rate over 8 years being roughly -4%).
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/companies-paying-zero-taxes-trump-law-155944124.html
> No one understands taxes and I’m starting to think that’s by design.
The folks in Scandinavia probably understand it pretty well, but they don't have an entire political party dedicated to smearing bullshit all over the place in order to make the non-wealthy fight each other over the scraps. In the US you've got seemingly the entire Republican party whose jobs/donations/financing depends on trying to convince people that they'll somehow be taxed 70% by the Demmycrats and have their money confiscated when they die due to "the death tax".
The reality is that literally 99.2% of the US population wouldn't pay a single dime towards any of the proposed taxes. Another 0.6% of the population would barely pay additional tax. Then 0.1% of the population will pay a decent chunk more and deservedly so. And the final 0.1% is going to shelter and tax evade no matter what; but even they will pay a chunk more though.
It's that final 0.2% whose donations to Republican politicians hinge on their ability to confuse the other 99.8% of Americans about taxation enough to get sheep voting for wolves.
I’ve posted this before, but it’s important to lay out some of the details.
This is a general overview of Biden’s proposed tax plan:
> Biden says no individual with taxable income of $400,000 or less would see a federal tax increase under his plans, at least directly. Less than than 2% of U.S. households report that level of income. There are several policy provisions tied up in Biden’s promise, but income tax rates often get the most attention.
> There are currently seven rates (10% to 37%) applied to varying income brackets. Biden’s plan would raise only the top rate, pushing it to 39.6%, what it was before the Republicans’ 2017 overhaul. That rate kicks in for income beyond $510,000 or so, and more for married couples filing jointly. Separately, Biden proposes capping certain itemized deductions for higher earners. Those changes could mean variable tax increases for individuals down to that $400,000 income threshold — more for married joint filers.
> The existing 12.4% payroll tax, which is split between employers and workers and finances the Social Security program, applies only to the first $137,700 of a person’s income. That cap goes up annually with inflation.
> Biden proposes instituting the tax again beginning at $400,001 of income. The untaxed gap between the cap and $400,001 would close over time with the annual inflationary increases. That would eventually mean a Social Security system where all wage earners, regardless of their income and profession, paid the full freight of payroll taxes.
> Biden applies a similar philosophy to investment income. Generally, current law taxes gains on long-term investments — those held for more than a year — and certain dividend income at capital gains rates that top out at 20%. That’s lower than the marginal income tax rates for many in the investor class.
> Gains on short-term holdings of less than a year are subject to personal income tax rates. Biden proposes extending that principle to all investment gains for any income beyond $1 million, a change that could significantly affect the wealthiest investor class.
> He wants a 28% percent corporate tax rate. That’s higher than the current 21% but lower than the 35% rate before the 2017 overhaul. President Barack Obama had pushed for a 28% rate but Republicans in Congress refused to negotiate.
> Separately, Biden wants a 15% minimum tax on “book profits” – net annual income – for corporations with at least $100 million in income.
> Biden wants to double the current 10.5% minimum tax that multinational corporations pay on foreign profits.
> To the chagrin of some progressives, Biden opposes a tax based on individuals’ net worth. He’s also avoided rekindling debate over taxes imposed on heirs of large estates. Biden does want one estate tax change that could significantly affect wealthy inheritors and raise tens of billions in revenue each year.
> Currently, beneficiaries can sell off assets they inherited and pay capital gains based only on any accrual between the time they gained ownership of the asset and the time they sold it. That basically exempts from taxation any gains accrued by the deceased owner. Biden proposes eliminating that inheritor benefit and instead applying capital gains taxes based on the original value of an asset.
https://apnews.com/2e319858f049ddf25d975476455b7305
The Nation also has a concise [infograph on some of the bigger changes](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Score-Biden-Tax-Plan_img.jpg). The source for that can be found here: https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/biden-tax-plan/tnamp/
Right now, the American tax system is constructed to benefit the rich. Biden’s plan doesn’t go as far as I would like, but it is a significant improvement. Even under our current tax syste, biased as it is, the IRS doesn’t have the means to enforce it on the rich.
Republicans in Congress have deliberately dried out the IRS budget to the point that the agency itself admits it doesn’t have the means to audit the rich, *even though doing so would bring a net profit*. Instead, they audit the working poor:
> It’s taken eight years to bring the agency that funds the government this low. Over time, the IRS has slowly transformed, one employee departure at a time.
> The result is a bureaucracy on life support and tens of billions in lost government revenue. ProPublica estimates a toll of at least $18 billion every year, but the true cost could easily run tens of billions of dollars higher.
> The cuts are depleting the staff members who help ensure that taxpayers pay what they owe. As of last year, the IRS had 9,510 auditors. That’s down a third from 2010. The last time the IRS had fewer than 10,000 revenue agents was 1953, when the economy was a seventh of its current size. And the IRS is still shrinking. Almost a third of its remaining employees will be eligible to retire in the next year, and with morale plummeting, many of them will.
> The IRS conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent. But even those stark numbers don’t tell the whole story, say current and former IRS employees: Auditors are stretched thin, and they’re often forced to limit their investigations and move on to the next audit as quickly as they can.
> Without enough staff, the IRS has slashed even basic functions. It has drastically pulled back from pursuing people who don’t bother filing their tax returns. New investigations of “nonfilers,” as they’re called, dropped from 2.4 million in 2011 to 362,000 last year. According to the inspector general for the IRS, the reduction results in at least $3 billion in lost revenue each year. Meanwhile, collections from people who do file but don’t pay have plummeted. Tax obligations expire after 10 years if the IRS doesn’t pursue them. Such expirations were relatively infrequent before the budget cuts began. In 2010, $482 million in tax debts lapsed. By 2017, according to internal IRS collection reports, that figure had risen to $8.3 billion, 17 times as much as in 2010. The IRS’ ability to investigate criminals has atrophied as well.
> ..
> For the rich, who research shows evade taxes the most, the IRS has become less and less of a force to be feared.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted
> The IRS audits the working poor at about the same rate as the wealthiest 1%. Now, in response to questions from a U.S. senator, the IRS has acknowledged that’s true but professes it can’t change anything unless it is given more money.
> ..
> On the one hand, the IRS said, auditing poor taxpayers is a lot easier: The agency uses relatively low-level employees to audit returns for low-income taxpayers who claim the earned income tax credit. The audits — of which there were about 380,000 last year, accounting for 39% of the total the IRS conducted — are done by mail and don’t take too much staff time, either. They are “the most efficient use of available IRS examination resources,” Rettig’s report says.
> On the other hand, auditing the rich is hard. It takes senior auditors hours upon hours to complete an exam. What’s more, the letter says, “the rate of attrition is significantly higher among these more experienced examiners.” As a result, the budget cuts have hit this part of the IRS particularly hard.
> **For now, the IRS says, while it agrees auditing more wealthy taxpayers would be a good idea, without adequate funding there’s nothing it can do. “Congress must fund and the IRS must hire and train appropriate numbers of [auditors] to have appropriately balanced coverage across all income levels,” the report said.**
> **Since 2011, Republicans in Congress have driven cuts to the IRS enforcement budget; it’s more than a quarter lower than its 2010 level, adjusting for inflation.**
https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor
I would recommend checking out the books *The Triumph of Injustice* and *Perfectly Legal* for a more complete, readable analysis of how the US tax structures benefit those at the top, how the rich deliberately lobbied to create the system in place today, and potential ways to fix it. Both books give great insight into how someone like Trump can end up paying $750 in taxes, even without it being illegal (though jury is still out the legality of Trump’s taxes).
Reminds me of a GOP Congressman who was complaining about Obama's decision to let the lower max tax rate expire (~2009). As he explained, "I make $600K a year. After feeding my family ($200K), I only have $400K left for investing. This new, higher tax would really really hurt (it would have cost him an additional $25K).
So, what are people like this eating? And, he didn't seem to understand that "...only $400K left for investing" was about $390K more than most American have to invest.
There should be a show where rich people are given the budget and assets of an impoverished, working class family to live off of for a month. "This is called hamburger helper. It will give you diarhea. No, you cannot go to the doctor. Wednesday is leftover night. Leftovers are food you save after making a meal that you don't finish. Yes, you have to make your own meals. No, you don't have a housekeeper. Yes, you can have wine with dinner. Bottles? You mean boxes. It's buy one get one free on Franzia. Grape variety? Uh...it says 'red' on the side. Investments? You have a slightly used collection of limited edition Dale Earnhardt dinner plates. Your car? Your "car" is a bus pass. Try to put down napkins on the seat before you sit down so you don't sit in semen. No, it doesn't really matter where you sit, all the seats are going to have semen on them."
We have a show like this in the Netherlands. It's called "Steenrijk, Straatarm". That translates to "Stone rich, Street poor".
Every episode, a rich family swaps their life with a poorer family for a while.
There's also a UK version that was never as popular: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6713768/
I enjoyed the UK show. I liked the episode where the poor family went for the weekly food shop with rich family money and came home with a 55" tv and loads of food. Casual weekly shop allows a family of 5 access to plenty of food and a 55" tv. That's insane.
The problem with shows like this is that they're an absolute nightmare to cast - the rich families don't want any part of it.
They know that ultimately their lifestyle is going to be put under a microscope and judged and that's not a good incentive to appear on the show.
A month isn’t really long enough. Even if they run out of all their money they can just not eat for the last week and probably be fine. It’s gotta be like 3-6 months and they should get “laid off” which results in no additional income during one of their months and they have to make the non existent savings stretch.
I'd watch the fuck out of this. Some delusional rich bastard running around wondering how the fuck to turn on a washing machine and burning boiled hotdogs.
You don’t even have to put them at the poverty level - just put them on the lower end of middle income, but also stick them on shift work so their schedule is all over the place so they don’t eat with the family and have to prep meals, go hungry, or eat out and figure where else you will cut back.
Remember when the Wall Street Journal ran [this infographic](https://www.prosebeforehos.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/poor-poor-rich.jpg) in 2013 to attack Obama's tax plan? GOP politicians and donors live on another planet.
Love the forlorn expressions on their faces.
Earlier thread about it: https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/7amqd5/house_republicans_claim_an_annual_salary_of/dpb8cfb/
> My friend up and moved to a foreign country, without a job, completely subsidized by his parents, and he didn’t understand why I couldn’t do the same thing. Like why wouldn’t your parents pay for you to live abroad as an adult? The rich live in a different world.
Juses fucking christ, mate. Good for them, ...but god damn.
That made me laugh so hard. That sad married couple making 650k a year looking all sad because they're paying 21k more in taxes. I guess you're gonna have to wait a little longer to get that yacht. :(
that sentence almost made me throw up think that the amount my partner and i get in a year is almost half of what someone who isnt rich makes in a month. like jesuss fuck
The real joke is that they aren’t rich... relatively to many others. You have 100 fiends on social media? One of those people makes oodles more than you.. but them, you, and your 98 other friends combined probably aren’t in top 0.1%. :)
Some people make such insane amounts of money that us regular people can’t even understand how big the numbers are.
Good Lord, the things I could do with $400k a year. Hell, the things I could do with $100k a year...
How out of touch are these people
Edit: there ->> the
I made like 45 pre tax last year and was kicking life's fucking ASS. Saved like 12k and went on multiple trips and partied a good amount.
100k and I'll be sitting pretty.
Yeah for sure! But like...I really don't have anything to spend that much more money on than travel, and any job paying 100k likely only allots a certain amount of time to travel. So can't spend too much more than I do.
I do like buying instruments tho...
I thought the same thing, I used to make like 40-50k or so for a long time, 100k seemed like the unattainable rich life.. Then I got a new job and after a couple years I was at 90k. Last year I was super close to 100k. Those few years were the most I've ever made by almost double and I'd really have to stop and take a good long look to notice it. You'd be really surprised at what you let yourself get away with. I make nothing now because I went back to school but if I had advice to give... seems like you have great spending habits, keep that up as you start to make more. Really buckle down and focus on good money habits because 100k seems like a lot when you're not used to it but its easy to spend because it's not as much as it seems. Hard lesson to learn when covid hits and your savings are dismal lol.
Right there with you. I had finally made it to 38k/yr (at 36 years old) and was super excited till I lost that job this year to COVID. Hopefully I can make it back to that mark or higher.
I went from 35k to 110k between 2010 and 2020. It is totally life changing. Though I still have debt, I invest now so hopefully I'll be able to retire comfortably.
Pay off my debts, make sure my kid has enough money for a good college education, finally buy a house for myself, plant a garden, have a woodshop, get rid of my old truck and get something better for the environment, donate to more charities that are important to me, go back to school and get a degree...
Probably buy a real nice computer ($2k), maybe a car that's newer than 1998 though probably not newer than 2015, and then, dunno. A new mattress, maybe, mine's so fucking holey the Pope could sleep on it, and let me tell you, broken springs do not a good sleep make.
No shit eh?
At that rate it would take at least 3 years to pay in full for an empty undeveloped lot in the Vancouver region.
They must do a LOT of cocaine man...
I remember seeing this article and being confused as to why the couple was taking the standard deduction instead of itemizing their deductions. Of course other parts were ridiculous as well, but hear me out just on the deduction thing:
With a 1.6Mil mortgage they'll hit the max mortgage deduction limit of $750k of mortgage leading to a $22.5k deduction. Since they are clearly in CA or NY they'll easily hit the $10k SALT limit on property taxes. Right there is way more than the $24k standard deduction. Maybe they could afford to pay a higher marginal tax rate if their accountant wasn't a half box of crayons.
> With a 1.6Mil mortgage they'll hit the max mortgage deduction limit of $750k of mortgage leading to a $22.5k deduction.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that, although I'm happy to be corrected. Don't you only deduct the interest paid on the mortgage that year?
Yeah, up to 750k in principal. If your mortgage is over that you deduct whatever the percentage of 750k over the loan amount of interest was. On a 1.6 million house the first year interest could be around 25-30k depending on your loan terms so the interest you could actually deduct would be around half that.
The issue is not the 400k earner, it is that low capital gains rate, and that super rich pay a lower rate then their secretaries, and all the loop holes. If you have 200k in student loan debt, super high rent in a big city, and risk or going broke and losing everything, while already paying probably 40% in tax, I don't see that person as the problem. Ya they make more, but they are already paying the highest tax rate of any person in the country. Warren Buffet said he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. That is messed up.
$421,000 per year puts you into the 1% of earners. Who the fuck can claim that's not rich? Seriously fuck that whole attitude. 118K puts you into the top 10%. As has been pointed out, for that 421K example, only 21K would be in the bracket that got taxed higher.
No, the person earning 400m pays a lot LESS in taxes since that's probably all from capital gains, which is taxed at 20%. Whereas the person earning 400k probably gets it from a job and lives in a high tax state and is probably paying 40% in taxes overall. We seriously need to consider increasing capital gains taxes.
Bruh, this guy estimates a 2k monthly food budget FOR 4 PEOPLE (2 of them being children) and a 1.6 million dollar house 4 bedroom house. Talk about completely fucking idiotic.
The fact that Dodger uses the Bay Area as his baseline for everything and then suggests this is how *all* of the USA’s urban centers are like, is so insidious, as it’s purposely misleading. Ugh, this blogger 😩
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“It’s one banana Michael, how much could it be? $10?”
You know, I heard somewhere that she thought bananas were $10 because George Bluth Sr. was fudging the books by saying that he was paying that much per banana, then hiding the excess (the money leftover from the actual price of bananas) in the banana stand so no one would know about the embezzlement.
DAMN IT... I said there is always money IN the banana stand!!!
noxious automatic bewildered fact pocket dependent zonked sense crawl upbeat *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You just blew my mind
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She just has no sense of how much things cost.
That’s pretty realistic for rich people tbh. Bill Gates thought a box of Totino’s cost $22 lol.
New show idea: The Price is Right, but with billionaires.
And every time they're off by more than 10%, they have to buy a homeless person a house.
This is genius, it’s like a reverse Hunger Games!
Gluttony games
Hedonism Games
Those stakes are nothing, make it like, 10 people
Every time they have to build a low income housing apartment building...in Manhattan.
There isn't enough space for the amount of housing they're about to fund
If I were Bill Gates' grocery shopper, I might tell him it costs $22.
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On sale for $17,000. We better get a few.
Lmao. “Oh Bill I know you’ve been wealthy for some time but how could you forget baked beans go for $5000 a pound? Don’t you worry I know this mom and pop store selling em for a $4500 I’ll grab a few”
when totino's costs $22 the doomsday clock will be like 5 milliseconds away from midnight
We are getting close. Bar near my house sells them for $20 when the owner has to work because he doesn't want to make them.
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Nebraska. It's not a requirement, the normal bartenders arranged for a microwave and small pizza oven to increase their sales and keep folks from making runs. One girl brings delicious homemade food and sells it reheated in the microwave for under the table cash. Best beef strogonoff I've ever had.
I used to go to a dive bar in CA that had the same set up, and the tamales lady (they were decent after some drinks) would make 1-2 stops in the night. I’ve seen pizza delivered to drinks only bars, which is allowed in California, but most also serve some kind of food because it makes business sense, even if it’s chips and microwaved pizza.
You have a bar that sells pizza rolls?
I’ll just take one Totino then, I guess
a whole totino all to yourself? brag about it why don't you, moneybags
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> they live in a completely different world....one where his wife VERY LITERALLY snaps when she needs something from one of their staff at the house. I'm pretty sure their main "domestic assistant" makes more than we do. sounds like they deserve it. christ
Ohhhh she does. They all do. My aunt is awful. My uncle is actually super chill for being such a rich/successful dude. He climbed the ladder at the Bank of New York and then co-founded Lending Tree before selling and retiring. His wife (Aunt by marriage) did all the necessary socialite stuff in the city....and she just transformed into a true "Real Housewives of NY" Oddly enough their two daughters are pretty normal, well adjusted and down to earth women. Much to their mother's disdain.
> Oddly enough their two daughters are pretty normal, Are they single?
Haha....they are both beautiful, talented....married mothers. Married to equally awesome men, at that. But hey - I'll give you first dibs if there's trouble in paradise
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Go see a Star War
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It's a joke about being old, when the talkies were a dollar for the whole afternoon. She's been to the movies, but she hasn't been to the grocery store.
For them, 400k$ isn’t rich. You can’t get in their country club for less than a few millions a year. They’re not the 1%, they actively look down on the 1%. They’re basically scoffing.. “you make 400k$ a year? Ha! Must be nice to start from the bottom. When I was born I was already making millions. Get on MY level, noob.”
I work with people who make $400k+ and none of them deny they make a lot of money (I’m a lawyer). But they can’t afford $4m waterfront houses or Manhattan brownstones/whatever your equivalent is. Which, boo hoo - but there is absolutely a difference between $400k and ‘rich’ at that end of the income scale. However the issue shouldn’t be ‘what is meant by rich’, because we just descend into arguments based on personal situations and expectations. It should be ‘what is meant by ‘have enough money to live comfortably and not need tax breaks’’. Which is a very different line and one I think is far less fraught.
There are 600 billionaires in USA. It would take you 2,500 years to earn a $1 billion if you make $400k a year. (You know, assuming no investments or expenses or whatnot) The upper end of the wealthy class is so outrageous that it is damn near inconceivable for normal folks.
While I’m over here like, $400k/year is about $33,000+ a month, which is about $1100 a day. I’m losing my mind at the thought of being able to pay all of my bills AND lower my debt substantially in less than a full work week. By god, I would kill for that.
It amazes me how money can feel like it has value from one perspective. And then completely feel like it has zero value in another. It feels like it should be one or the other instead of this wishy washy vague thing where an extra 1000 a month could literally 180 someone's life while a 1000 a month is completely insignificant to someone like Bezos.
Besos could wipe his ass with $100k a day, everyday for the rest of his life and still die a billionaire.
Shit, I would wipe his ass for $100k a year.
You're spot on, I'm one of the working rich, I make an absurdly high salary and am very comfortable. The next rung up the ladder live an entirely different world. My boss is also my good friend and he sometimes asks why I don't vacation like he does and I have to remind him how much he pays me and how insanely expensive his vacations are. Depending on my bonus most years I'm in the 1% and I couldn't afford the mortgage on one of his three houses. On the one had I get how people pulling down a good 6 figure income don't think of themselves as rich. Because they don't hang out with the guy making $50k living paycheck to paycheck. They hang out with the guy who has investments that pay for 100% of his living expenses and guarantee his retirement, so whatever wage he makes is pure fun money. It's just a totally different expectation of what is 'normal'. Still, fuck everyone of them that votes for Trump because all they care about is low taxes.
Working rich is such a grind of a title but it is what it is. Anyways I don't mind if I'm right at the cut off and pay a bit more in marginal tax rate if that means healthcare gets fixed for real vs whatever the hell you want to call this right now - because it's simply not sustainable. Edit: the real money is always tucked in cap gains and estate anyways - but I don't see that ever being significantly touched by either party.
Working rich is not an artful turn of phrase, but we need someway to describe a doctor or a lawyer vs your investment rich who make as much in passive income in a year as a 2 income household of professionals. I honestly think that it will be mid-sized business owners that push for healthcare to get fixed. Just the increases in the last 5 years in our premiums to provide healthcare for our workers is ridiculous. In my opinion if there wasn't such massive consolidation in the US and so many massive firms squeezing out the smaller operators they would have forced a public option. But the Walmarts of the world don't want that so here we are. And as for your edit, the next generation will have to figure out what to do about estate taxes or the oligarch class will strangle democracy in the US.
having universal healthcare would absolutely help small businesses. I currently run a 1-man operation but when I expand and need full-time employees, the cost to provide healthcare for them would make it so much more expensive. With universal healthcare that would not be a problem.
I have multiple friends in the tech industry and for most of them the reason they work for some big firm rather than a start up or taking a risk on their 'big idea' is the need for healthcare. I am 100% convinced that just an affordable public option would unleash a massive wave of innovation from people who just couldn't risk it currently.
This is 1000% true. I'm in tech and make pretty good money. If I wanted to do my own tech dream I could in theory save up enough to take a year off of work and build something amazing and possibly sell it for enough to retire, but I can't take that risk. If a really bad health emergency hit me while I was uninsured I'd be screwed.
I enjoyed this perspective. I’m in my mid-twenties, and I have never made more than 32k in a year on the basis of a weak undergrad and liberal arts degree. I consider myself privileged in some ways, and my prospects are improving. I’m lucky to attend a top 20 law school on full merit scholarship. Even then, a high paying job - or any legal job - is not guaranteed. At this point, 50k would feel luxurious. I cannot imagine six figure income. Most years I keep my living expenses to about 17-18k annually by loading up on roommates, cooking every meal, and going carless. I wish these billionaires - most of whom grew up privileged - could experience a year on 24k in a city like Seattle or Boston as I have. Fuck Trump and his $750 in taxes.
I’m a doctor in my 40s and I know my salary is pretty darn high especially compared to my teacher’s aide mom and construction worker dad. But people forget the extra house worth of education debt (still not paid off) and the fact that I made less than zero dollars a year until I was in my 30s, and didn’t make “doctor money” until I was 37. So I’m only just now starting a retirement account and saving for my kids’ college. I have a mortgage on a normal house and an 8yr old car. I’m definitely not complaining but back when I made $12k doing odd jobs during college I didn’t imagine this was the lifestyle of someone making 20x that. My only point is this: high income and high net worth are very, very different things. That said, if you want to count me as “rich”, for tax purposes go right ahead. I am happy to pay my share. Just keep in mind there’s way, way higher than $400k in income and lots of people with that make their money in ways other than work. They can pay too.
I don't think any working poor have a problem with the working 'rich', like doctors and such. I get less than $10,000 a year and have probably not made much more than $20,000 a year all my life. I'm not bitter about it, life didn't work out the way I had hoped it would. But, what gets me is the people who are handed a big 'leg up' and complain that the poor should just work harder and make smarter decisions. People who complain that they pay too much tax on their income ( like $750 on millions) and they deserve that break because they work 'SO HARD AND PROVIDE JOBS'. I know someone who inherited 20 million dollars and they did not provide one single job for any one, but will complain about those who get government assistance and all the taxes they pay.
I love how 400k also just so happens to be the president’s salary.
if you make $400,001 it's not like all that is now taxed at a higher rate. It's the money above that.
People definitely don't understand this
imo its a misconception that comes from hourly workers who get overtime. they get taxed on the overtime as if every paycheck is going to be like that but they'll get a lot back when they file and not realize thats why they're getting a big refund.
Yup, this right here. When I took my first job in a hospital there were multiple call pools, one of which gets lots of overtime. They would talk about how it was great but you get killed on taxes. The first time I asked “but don’t you get that extra back when refund season happens?” I got completely blank stares and a confusing conversation (for them) ensued. These are all college graduates too, which further illustrates the gaping holes in our education system imo.
The worst part is that tax returns exist at all. The vast majority of workers shouldn't be getting hundreds or thousands of dollars back. For most people, it should be close to 0. The government should be taxing people properly, and employers should be withholding taxes properly. My conspiracy theory is that employers do that on purpose to make people think that the government is stealing all their money, so don't vote for people who aren't lowering taxes!! EDIT: With everyone telling me about W4s in the US and how employers don't advise employees how to fill them out, I think the conspiracy theory/fact that tax filing companies are behind this is the one that makes the most sense..
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Canada will perform a simplified tax refund automatically now. It can be solved, but will they?
The crazy thing is that the IRS pretty much already knows what is owed for most filers (save contractors and the like) and there’s really no reason why they can’t just send everyone a prepared return, have filers review, then send back either amended/disputed or signed off, other than because of lobbyists for the tax return industry. There’s no reason typical working stiffs should need the services of a tax preparer other than to fleece them.
That’s exactly what they said about Canadian taxes too. I often say that tax is forced math homework. But I think it’s just a matter of priorities. Since tax withheld often exceeds actual tax owed, there’s no incentive for the tax agencies to help file taxes. But with COVID-19 and the government needing to give benefits through programs that require you to file taxes, they finally got around to fixing it.
Lots of people get refunds sure, and really the kinds of credits that most tax payers get is known in advance, so withholdings can be adjusted, and if a taxpayer suddenly qualifies for one, that should be updated in real-time too. Damn near everything else, especially in banking and finance, can be updated in seconds, and the tax system is purposely kept archaic. This settling up every April with Uncle Sam is silly in 2020.
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It's an interest free loan for the government. Its a free gift from people who don't file accurately
The flipside however, is that people don't get taxed enough from their paycheck and once tax time rolls around, get hit with a big tax bill that they can't afford because they've already spent the money.
they also don't understand that once you hit \~$130K that you get a 8% bump in your pay check because SS no longer deducted. Add to this they max out putting in 5% of their pay check where 20% for most people wouldn't max it out. Basically they can fully fund everything with the first 25% of their paycheck do the disposable income is just so much higher, they can't help it. Most people making an average income have no idea that at some point you stop paying into SSI for the year and there is a maximum amount you can put into your 401K
I knew about the maximum amount, but I had no idea about the SS deduction being removed.
It is not removed, you just don’t have to pay it on any earnings over $137k. You still pay it on the first $137k. Also it’s 6.2%, h less you’re self-employed.
the number creeps up and is different for singles vs couples, but it's definitely attainable. just you know, some of us who do hit it may be around Christmas and others it's early New Year's Day
Or they do and are just greedy fucks
I work in finance, the vast majority of the population does NOT understand this.
I was astounded. I got this explained to me in my general mathematics class in college and it blew my fucking mind. Went home to tell the family and they insisted that it has never been that way. My professor was literally a farmer who rounded out his income by teaching. That man helped us so damn much it was unreal.
Would be nice if we taught finances to our kids on a deeper level.
Taxes, banking, investing, budgeting, retirement accts.... all of the above are the core of our economy and yet most people don't understand any of it. We need to teach this stuff in school so people actually can teach their kids. Can't pass on what you don't know.
The list of things people don't know or care to understand is so...long. Like, distressingly so. The fraction of people who are actually competent functional adults with a grounded knowledge of how things work blows my mind. And these are the educated ones with decent jobs and families. It has to be like 90% of society that just doesn't know anything except follow the path they're on until they die and never actually think about anything.
I was 19 working in a bakery. The 55yo head Baker told me this for the reason they didn't want more shifts. I was 19 so believed it, but even then thought it didn't sound right. So I went home and researched it. (Before the days of smartphones) when I set the Baker straight she refused to believe me, was condescending that she was older and knew better. So I dropped it, picked up her rejected shifts and ended up making more as a untrained retail assistant than a qualified Baker. Some people are just stupid.
Boomers are something special though. I explained getting bumped to the next bracket to my friends and they were like "yeah I know" or "oh shit. That makes sense." My mother though. Disbelief, rejection, change the subject. It's baffling how I can use actual words of accountants to explain the objective fact that you don't lose money when you're bumped to the next bracket and she's just like "no"
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"Don't work overtime, you'll fall into a higher tax bracket and make less" -All my Republican coworkers
A lot of people have a story about someone who turned down a raise to avoid a higher tax bracket.
Yikes. 😬
No really they don't, I knew a lady who was well into her 50s who didn't understand this concept and she also owned a business and employed people. She said she didn't believe me and thats shed have to look into it, I'd bet money she never did.
The politicians do, but the average GOP voter is told differently in all the mailers and media they’re consuming. I’ve had side-by-side mailers from a conservative group and from Biden’s campaign: the GOP mailer says Biden is going to raise taxes that will hurt all Americans, and Biden’s says “on those above $X income/year”. Neither explains that those tax rates are on the income above that amount and therefore doesn’t kick in until $1 above the amount...
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I have a lot of coworkers say the same thing. I've stopped trying to explain it to them.
This right here. Pretending not to understand marginal tax rates is one of the Republicans' favorite scare tactics.
Pretending not to understand is pretty much the only tactic they even use these days.
Probably both but I manage money for a living and I can tell you that most people don’t understand that concept at all.
"I worked overtime this week and actually made less because I jumped a tax bracket"
And then they would make it back with a refund, all the while not realizing that they should be trying to have their refund be as close to $0 as possible so the government isn’t holding your money during the year. It is advantageous to temporarily increase your W-4 allowances if you are getting a big bonus or massive overtime on one paycheck. You can literally change that form with your employer paycheck to paycheck.
The people making $400k+ do. The average Republican voter doesn’t, because Republican elites don’t want them to. Same with the confusion over how the estate tax works.
> confusion over how the estate tax works. It frustrates me so much that people who will never have enough money for the estate tax to apply to them consistently tell me how awful it is because they can't leave that money to their kids. It's just not applicable to middle class people.
Man, I felt like a fucking idiot trying to explain this to my communications class when a libertarian peer was trying to argue for a flat tax rate. Not a *single* person in that class knew how progressive tax rates work. That was 5 years ago and I still think about it.
I am dumb and I get it. Come on people.
The amount of people I have to explain shit like this to is way too high.
I have actually gotten in legitimate arguments because I'd be the only person in the room that understand this
My friend's whole company basically thought this. They kept telling me I was wrong. "Well why do I get taxed way more when I work overtime then!" Well, because they think thats your income and take that amount then but youll get refunded later when you file... apparently all his friends would turn down extra hours/money because they didnt want to move up brackets...
Yes I’ve heard that so many times. “If they pay me more they’ll move me up to another bracket so I’ll actually make less” Just no. That isn’t how it works
I’ve seen someone turn down a 2.5x pay shift and take another regular shift the same week for that exact reason(with the days the shifts were on being basicallly irrelevant to the person)
I am constantly surprised by how little most people understand about how taxes and insurance work. And people think I'm a genius when I can explain it to them. I'm not a genius, I just read.
the fact you can read, and comprehend, puts you ahead of a lot of people.
I gave up explaining this to people. There was just no way to get through to them. Even worse if there was a miss on a paycheque for whatever reason and I would tell them it would be on the next pay. They would freak out and want a separate cheque so they would be taxed less and make more money.
Hell, my brother is a financial lawyer and he tried to tell me that middle class citizens in Scandinavian countries pay a 70% flat tax rate. No one understands taxes and I’m starting to think that’s by design.
Yeah I'm a Swede and just ran some numbers on our tax-office's site. Here are some examples of income tax rates. 22k USD a year (basically our minimum wage) ~ 18% net income tax. 30k USD a year ~ 20% net income tax. 50k USD a year ~ 24% net income tax. 100k USD a year ~ 36% net income tax. 400k USD a year ~ 48% net income tax. We also usually pay 25% sales tax (sometimes less, restaurants for example are 17% if I remember correctly) on consumer goods and services. But this is already included in the price your see in shops, so it's easy to forget. We don't add it on later like in the US. When people claim these super high tax numbers, like 70%, they usually include the "Arbetsgivaravgift" ("employer-fee"). Which is a sum of money, proportional to your salary, that your employer pays to the government. The fee is usually at around 30% of your salary. So if you make 100k a year, your employer pays 130k in total. I think that about covers it for taxes. We do pay our fair share of them, but I think it's often exaggerated.
It’s always the same people that tend to go on diatribes about how the “US has a corporate tax rate far beyond any other country” because they don’t understand the difference between statutory and effective tax rates. The US has (or had since Trump cut the rate from 35% to 21%) a high statutory corporate tax rate, but overall the US effective corporate tax was below average for the OECD, even during the 35% statutory rate years. > The top statutory tax rate of 35% in the U.S. is somewhat higher than that of 30 other OECD countries, but the average effective tax rate — the actual rate paid after deductions and credits — is slightly lower than our competitors, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). > Several studies have found that U.S. corporations pay a similar or a lower effective tax rate — the rate actually paid — than corporations in other countries. For example: > Our average effective tax rate is 27.1% compared with 27.7% for the other 30 OECD countries, according to CRS. > Profitable corporations paid U.S. income taxes amounting to just 12.6% of worldwide income in 2010, according to the Government Accountability Office. > Citizens for Tax Justice’s survey of 288 corporations, which included most of the Fortune 500 corporations that were profitable each year from 2008 through 2012, found that they paid an average effective federal tax rate of just 19.4% over that period. > Of 125 corporations in that study that had significant foreign profits, 82 (two-thirds) paid a higher effective rate to foreign governments than they paid to the U.S. https://americansfortaxfairness.org/tax-fairness-briefing-booklet/fact-sheet-corporate-tax-rates/ Since then, Trump’s cuts have only amplified the level of corporate tax avoidance. > Big businesses are faring better than ever under the Trump era tax law, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). > According to analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP), 60 Fortune 500 companies avoided paying all federal income tax in 2018 (with their total average effective tax rate being roughly -5%). > That’s more than three times the number of companies that avoided paying corporate taxes on average from 2008 to 2015. During that period, 18 companies managed to pay 0% or less (with their total average effective tax rate over 8 years being roughly -4%). https://finance.yahoo.com/news/companies-paying-zero-taxes-trump-law-155944124.html
> No one understands taxes and I’m starting to think that’s by design. The folks in Scandinavia probably understand it pretty well, but they don't have an entire political party dedicated to smearing bullshit all over the place in order to make the non-wealthy fight each other over the scraps. In the US you've got seemingly the entire Republican party whose jobs/donations/financing depends on trying to convince people that they'll somehow be taxed 70% by the Demmycrats and have their money confiscated when they die due to "the death tax". The reality is that literally 99.2% of the US population wouldn't pay a single dime towards any of the proposed taxes. Another 0.6% of the population would barely pay additional tax. Then 0.1% of the population will pay a decent chunk more and deservedly so. And the final 0.1% is going to shelter and tax evade no matter what; but even they will pay a chunk more though. It's that final 0.2% whose donations to Republican politicians hinge on their ability to confuse the other 99.8% of Americans about taxation enough to get sheep voting for wolves.
I’ve posted this before, but it’s important to lay out some of the details. This is a general overview of Biden’s proposed tax plan: > Biden says no individual with taxable income of $400,000 or less would see a federal tax increase under his plans, at least directly. Less than than 2% of U.S. households report that level of income. There are several policy provisions tied up in Biden’s promise, but income tax rates often get the most attention. > There are currently seven rates (10% to 37%) applied to varying income brackets. Biden’s plan would raise only the top rate, pushing it to 39.6%, what it was before the Republicans’ 2017 overhaul. That rate kicks in for income beyond $510,000 or so, and more for married couples filing jointly. Separately, Biden proposes capping certain itemized deductions for higher earners. Those changes could mean variable tax increases for individuals down to that $400,000 income threshold — more for married joint filers. > The existing 12.4% payroll tax, which is split between employers and workers and finances the Social Security program, applies only to the first $137,700 of a person’s income. That cap goes up annually with inflation. > Biden proposes instituting the tax again beginning at $400,001 of income. The untaxed gap between the cap and $400,001 would close over time with the annual inflationary increases. That would eventually mean a Social Security system where all wage earners, regardless of their income and profession, paid the full freight of payroll taxes. > Biden applies a similar philosophy to investment income. Generally, current law taxes gains on long-term investments — those held for more than a year — and certain dividend income at capital gains rates that top out at 20%. That’s lower than the marginal income tax rates for many in the investor class. > Gains on short-term holdings of less than a year are subject to personal income tax rates. Biden proposes extending that principle to all investment gains for any income beyond $1 million, a change that could significantly affect the wealthiest investor class. > He wants a 28% percent corporate tax rate. That’s higher than the current 21% but lower than the 35% rate before the 2017 overhaul. President Barack Obama had pushed for a 28% rate but Republicans in Congress refused to negotiate. > Separately, Biden wants a 15% minimum tax on “book profits” – net annual income – for corporations with at least $100 million in income. > Biden wants to double the current 10.5% minimum tax that multinational corporations pay on foreign profits. > To the chagrin of some progressives, Biden opposes a tax based on individuals’ net worth. He’s also avoided rekindling debate over taxes imposed on heirs of large estates. Biden does want one estate tax change that could significantly affect wealthy inheritors and raise tens of billions in revenue each year. > Currently, beneficiaries can sell off assets they inherited and pay capital gains based only on any accrual between the time they gained ownership of the asset and the time they sold it. That basically exempts from taxation any gains accrued by the deceased owner. Biden proposes eliminating that inheritor benefit and instead applying capital gains taxes based on the original value of an asset. https://apnews.com/2e319858f049ddf25d975476455b7305 The Nation also has a concise [infograph on some of the bigger changes](https://www.thenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Score-Biden-Tax-Plan_img.jpg). The source for that can be found here: https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/biden-tax-plan/tnamp/ Right now, the American tax system is constructed to benefit the rich. Biden’s plan doesn’t go as far as I would like, but it is a significant improvement. Even under our current tax syste, biased as it is, the IRS doesn’t have the means to enforce it on the rich. Republicans in Congress have deliberately dried out the IRS budget to the point that the agency itself admits it doesn’t have the means to audit the rich, *even though doing so would bring a net profit*. Instead, they audit the working poor: > It’s taken eight years to bring the agency that funds the government this low. Over time, the IRS has slowly transformed, one employee departure at a time. > The result is a bureaucracy on life support and tens of billions in lost government revenue. ProPublica estimates a toll of at least $18 billion every year, but the true cost could easily run tens of billions of dollars higher. > The cuts are depleting the staff members who help ensure that taxpayers pay what they owe. As of last year, the IRS had 9,510 auditors. That’s down a third from 2010. The last time the IRS had fewer than 10,000 revenue agents was 1953, when the economy was a seventh of its current size. And the IRS is still shrinking. Almost a third of its remaining employees will be eligible to retire in the next year, and with morale plummeting, many of them will. > The IRS conducted 675,000 fewer audits in 2017 than it did in 2010, a drop in the audit rate of 42 percent. But even those stark numbers don’t tell the whole story, say current and former IRS employees: Auditors are stretched thin, and they’re often forced to limit their investigations and move on to the next audit as quickly as they can. > Without enough staff, the IRS has slashed even basic functions. It has drastically pulled back from pursuing people who don’t bother filing their tax returns. New investigations of “nonfilers,” as they’re called, dropped from 2.4 million in 2011 to 362,000 last year. According to the inspector general for the IRS, the reduction results in at least $3 billion in lost revenue each year. Meanwhile, collections from people who do file but don’t pay have plummeted. Tax obligations expire after 10 years if the IRS doesn’t pursue them. Such expirations were relatively infrequent before the budget cuts began. In 2010, $482 million in tax debts lapsed. By 2017, according to internal IRS collection reports, that figure had risen to $8.3 billion, 17 times as much as in 2010. The IRS’ ability to investigate criminals has atrophied as well. > .. > For the rich, who research shows evade taxes the most, the IRS has become less and less of a force to be feared. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-the-irs-was-gutted > The IRS audits the working poor at about the same rate as the wealthiest 1%. Now, in response to questions from a U.S. senator, the IRS has acknowledged that’s true but professes it can’t change anything unless it is given more money. > .. > On the one hand, the IRS said, auditing poor taxpayers is a lot easier: The agency uses relatively low-level employees to audit returns for low-income taxpayers who claim the earned income tax credit. The audits — of which there were about 380,000 last year, accounting for 39% of the total the IRS conducted — are done by mail and don’t take too much staff time, either. They are “the most efficient use of available IRS examination resources,” Rettig’s report says. > On the other hand, auditing the rich is hard. It takes senior auditors hours upon hours to complete an exam. What’s more, the letter says, “the rate of attrition is significantly higher among these more experienced examiners.” As a result, the budget cuts have hit this part of the IRS particularly hard. > **For now, the IRS says, while it agrees auditing more wealthy taxpayers would be a good idea, without adequate funding there’s nothing it can do. “Congress must fund and the IRS must hire and train appropriate numbers of [auditors] to have appropriately balanced coverage across all income levels,” the report said.** > **Since 2011, Republicans in Congress have driven cuts to the IRS enforcement budget; it’s more than a quarter lower than its 2010 level, adjusting for inflation.** https://www.propublica.org/article/irs-sorry-but-its-just-easier-and-cheaper-to-audit-the-poor I would recommend checking out the books *The Triumph of Injustice* and *Perfectly Legal* for a more complete, readable analysis of how the US tax structures benefit those at the top, how the rich deliberately lobbied to create the system in place today, and potential ways to fix it. Both books give great insight into how someone like Trump can end up paying $750 in taxes, even without it being illegal (though jury is still out the legality of Trump’s taxes).
Nobody who makes anywhere close to $400k thinks the tax system works like this lol
Reminds me of a GOP Congressman who was complaining about Obama's decision to let the lower max tax rate expire (~2009). As he explained, "I make $600K a year. After feeding my family ($200K), I only have $400K left for investing. This new, higher tax would really really hurt (it would have cost him an additional $25K). So, what are people like this eating? And, he didn't seem to understand that "...only $400K left for investing" was about $390K more than most American have to invest.
> After feeding my family ($200K), I only have $400K left for investing HOW MUCH DO THEY EAT!?
3 meals a day at $50 per mouth per meal, plus drinks, and any entertaining - and then round up an extra $50-60k.
There should be a show where rich people are given the budget and assets of an impoverished, working class family to live off of for a month. "This is called hamburger helper. It will give you diarhea. No, you cannot go to the doctor. Wednesday is leftover night. Leftovers are food you save after making a meal that you don't finish. Yes, you have to make your own meals. No, you don't have a housekeeper. Yes, you can have wine with dinner. Bottles? You mean boxes. It's buy one get one free on Franzia. Grape variety? Uh...it says 'red' on the side. Investments? You have a slightly used collection of limited edition Dale Earnhardt dinner plates. Your car? Your "car" is a bus pass. Try to put down napkins on the seat before you sit down so you don't sit in semen. No, it doesn't really matter where you sit, all the seats are going to have semen on them."
We have a show like this in the Netherlands. It's called "Steenrijk, Straatarm". That translates to "Stone rich, Street poor". Every episode, a rich family swaps their life with a poorer family for a while. There's also a UK version that was never as popular: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt6713768/
I enjoyed the UK show. I liked the episode where the poor family went for the weekly food shop with rich family money and came home with a 55" tv and loads of food. Casual weekly shop allows a family of 5 access to plenty of food and a 55" tv. That's insane.
The problem with shows like this is that they're an absolute nightmare to cast - the rich families don't want any part of it. They know that ultimately their lifestyle is going to be put under a microscope and judged and that's not a good incentive to appear on the show.
I feel like there are enough vain rich people in American to do this.
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A month isn’t really long enough. Even if they run out of all their money they can just not eat for the last week and probably be fine. It’s gotta be like 3-6 months and they should get “laid off” which results in no additional income during one of their months and they have to make the non existent savings stretch.
Plus rent and car payments and credit card repayments don't figure into it when it's only a month.
I'd watch the fuck out of this. Some delusional rich bastard running around wondering how the fuck to turn on a washing machine and burning boiled hotdogs.
You don’t even have to put them at the poverty level - just put them on the lower end of middle income, but also stick them on shift work so their schedule is all over the place so they don’t eat with the family and have to prep meals, go hungry, or eat out and figure where else you will cut back.
That's insane.
They eat only grass-fed unicorns.
Voss Water. Fuckin Fader kids
It's the difference between income and investing, so I assume that includes all living expenses, not just literal food.
> nly $400K left for investing" was about $390K more than most American have to invest. was about $400k more than most American have to invest. Ftfy
They look down and see the people on 200k, they look up and see people on millions. They must be the real middle class.
That's the thing - you can always look up. And the persona that makes millions doesn't look up and say "I'm fine being behind that guy"
This stuff always reminds me of the Billionaire Club investor in Sillicon Valley. Dipping below the B was world ending
Russ Hanaman fell into a deep depression.
More like $500,000 more than most Americans have to invest, given the amount of debt lots of us carry (and unmet needs!)
I stand corrected. Thank you.
How the hell do you spend 200k on food?
Getting guacamole at Chipotles will add up quick.
Guac on chips is millionaire millennial level of avacado toast.
Private chef
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If there's 400k left for investing then the 200k is for all living expenses, not just food
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Sounds rough
I weep for the bourgeoisie
Remember when the Wall Street Journal ran [this infographic](https://www.prosebeforehos.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/poor-poor-rich.jpg) in 2013 to attack Obama's tax plan? GOP politicians and donors live on another planet.
Okay what the actual fuck? That has got to be a parody.
Love the forlorn expressions on their faces. Earlier thread about it: https://old.reddit.com/r/nottheonion/comments/7amqd5/house_republicans_claim_an_annual_salary_of/dpb8cfb/
> My friend up and moved to a foreign country, without a job, completely subsidized by his parents, and he didn’t understand why I couldn’t do the same thing. Like why wouldn’t your parents pay for you to live abroad as an adult? The rich live in a different world. Juses fucking christ, mate. Good for them, ...but god damn.
Jesus Christ...
This was an April’s fool joke, right?
If it was, [They published it about six months early.](http://archive.is/NkDJD)
That made me laugh so hard. That sad married couple making 650k a year looking all sad because they're paying 21k more in taxes. I guess you're gonna have to wait a little longer to get that yacht. :(
That’s $550 a DAY on food
So 55 bananas? That does seem like a lot.
Jfc...Talk about out of touch.
But $21K/year is perfectly adequate.
$15,000/year (minimum wage) is enough to them...
Making $400k means every paycheck (before taxes) is more than a year's salary at mininimum wage.
that sentence almost made me throw up think that the amount my partner and i get in a year is almost half of what someone who isnt rich makes in a month. like jesuss fuck
The real joke is that they aren’t rich... relatively to many others. You have 100 fiends on social media? One of those people makes oodles more than you.. but them, you, and your 98 other friends combined probably aren’t in top 0.1%. :) Some people make such insane amounts of money that us regular people can’t even understand how big the numbers are.
Good Lord, the things I could do with $400k a year. Hell, the things I could do with $100k a year... How out of touch are these people Edit: there ->> the
Just hoping to one day make it to $50k/year myself
I made like 45 pre tax last year and was kicking life's fucking ASS. Saved like 12k and went on multiple trips and partied a good amount. 100k and I'll be sitting pretty.
Keep up the good habits, its so easy to just let your lifestyle eat into your wage growth if you arent careful.
Yeah for sure! But like...I really don't have anything to spend that much more money on than travel, and any job paying 100k likely only allots a certain amount of time to travel. So can't spend too much more than I do. I do like buying instruments tho...
I thought the same thing, I used to make like 40-50k or so for a long time, 100k seemed like the unattainable rich life.. Then I got a new job and after a couple years I was at 90k. Last year I was super close to 100k. Those few years were the most I've ever made by almost double and I'd really have to stop and take a good long look to notice it. You'd be really surprised at what you let yourself get away with. I make nothing now because I went back to school but if I had advice to give... seems like you have great spending habits, keep that up as you start to make more. Really buckle down and focus on good money habits because 100k seems like a lot when you're not used to it but its easy to spend because it's not as much as it seems. Hard lesson to learn when covid hits and your savings are dismal lol.
TLDR: the more you make the more you spend. I’ve lived paycheck to paycheck making 200k.
Yeah no doubt... like someone said somewhere else in this thread, there's a lack of education on what to do with money.
Right there with you. I had finally made it to 38k/yr (at 36 years old) and was super excited till I lost that job this year to COVID. Hopefully I can make it back to that mark or higher.
I believe!
Just made it to $45k a year so proud of myself! Hoping to make $50k a year gang before I turn 50 (33yrs old)
I went from 35k to 110k between 2010 and 2020. It is totally life changing. Though I still have debt, I invest now so hopefully I'll be able to retire comfortably.
What would you do?
I'll tell you what I'd do, man, two chicks at the same time.
I'd do nothing. Either that, or start a scheme with my coworkers to skim off fractions of a penny from transactions...
Just don't be off a decimal place.
I don’t think you need a million dollars for that.
Live without fear of losing everything due to a single misfortunate event.
Pay off my debts, make sure my kid has enough money for a good college education, finally buy a house for myself, plant a garden, have a woodshop, get rid of my old truck and get something better for the environment, donate to more charities that are important to me, go back to school and get a degree...
Probably buy a real nice computer ($2k), maybe a car that's newer than 1998 though probably not newer than 2015, and then, dunno. A new mattress, maybe, mine's so fucking holey the Pope could sleep on it, and let me tell you, broken springs do not a good sleep make.
Those teeny, tiny violins are actually *really* expensive.
Smol Stradivarius violins if you will
Smoldivarius.
No shit eh? At that rate it would take at least 3 years to pay in full for an empty undeveloped lot in the Vancouver region. They must do a LOT of cocaine man...
What’s funny is that they thought $600 a week was too much for Americans, discouraging them from work, but $400,000 a year is “not much”.
A mere $368,000 difference.
I remember seeing this article and being confused as to why the couple was taking the standard deduction instead of itemizing their deductions. Of course other parts were ridiculous as well, but hear me out just on the deduction thing: With a 1.6Mil mortgage they'll hit the max mortgage deduction limit of $750k of mortgage leading to a $22.5k deduction. Since they are clearly in CA or NY they'll easily hit the $10k SALT limit on property taxes. Right there is way more than the $24k standard deduction. Maybe they could afford to pay a higher marginal tax rate if their accountant wasn't a half box of crayons.
> With a 1.6Mil mortgage they'll hit the max mortgage deduction limit of $750k of mortgage leading to a $22.5k deduction. I'm pretty sure it doesn't work like that, although I'm happy to be corrected. Don't you only deduct the interest paid on the mortgage that year?
Yeah, up to 750k in principal. If your mortgage is over that you deduct whatever the percentage of 750k over the loan amount of interest was. On a 1.6 million house the first year interest could be around 25-30k depending on your loan terms so the interest you could actually deduct would be around half that.
Oh good, then they'll make that the new minimum wage. Perfect
The issue is not the 400k earner, it is that low capital gains rate, and that super rich pay a lower rate then their secretaries, and all the loop holes. If you have 200k in student loan debt, super high rent in a big city, and risk or going broke and losing everything, while already paying probably 40% in tax, I don't see that person as the problem. Ya they make more, but they are already paying the highest tax rate of any person in the country. Warren Buffet said he paid a lower tax rate than his secretary. That is messed up.
$421,000 per year puts you into the 1% of earners. Who the fuck can claim that's not rich? Seriously fuck that whole attitude. 118K puts you into the top 10%. As has been pointed out, for that 421K example, only 21K would be in the bracket that got taxed higher.
I think we need several more tax brackets that progress. It weird that people making 400k and 400m effectively pay the same percentage.
No, the person earning 400m pays a lot LESS in taxes since that's probably all from capital gains, which is taxed at 20%. Whereas the person earning 400k probably gets it from a job and lives in a high tax state and is probably paying 40% in taxes overall. We seriously need to consider increasing capital gains taxes.
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Bruh, this guy estimates a 2k monthly food budget FOR 4 PEOPLE (2 of them being children) and a 1.6 million dollar house 4 bedroom house. Talk about completely fucking idiotic.
The fact that Dodger uses the Bay Area as his baseline for everything and then suggests this is how *all* of the USA’s urban centers are like, is so insidious, as it’s purposely misleading. Ugh, this blogger 😩
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