So I really pay no income tax?

I hope this doesn't turn into a political argument, but I'm just curious, with the often-repated "47 percent of all Americans pay no income tax." If I'm one of those 47 percent.
Like everyone else, I had taxes deducted from every paycheck. When I filed, I ended up getting a refund.
Does that mean I did not pay any income tax?
Again, not looking for an argument about the politics of it, I'm just a little (or maybe a lot) ignorant of how this works.

 

Nope. You just gave the federal government an interest-free loan for a year.

 

If your refund wasn't equal to or more than the total you paid in payroll deductions then you did pay taxes. You just paid too much in payroll deductions and, as Waylon pointed out, provided the government with an interest-free loan

 

I can't believe you seriously don't know if you paid taxes.

 

I think I was wrong and smallpotatoes is actually a sock puppet doing performance art. I thought the threads about every parental complaint and every knock under the hood of his car were true, but between this and the "she didn't even accept my apology!" thread, I think it's just performance art I fell for.

 

This is a gross oversimplification, but it applies to so many:

If you owe the Feds penny one in taxes, you're paying federal income tax.
How much the Feds withheld re your salary in any specific calendar year
is irrelevant to the discussion.

Glad to help clarify this in your mind.

Now:

This 47% business is more teabag shitstirring . . . bootlicking of their Gilded Age masters. 150+ years of this shit in this country . . . it's bloody
remarkable, people politicking and voting against their own best interests.
Mass hypnosis is an amazing thing.

 

This is a good read, blows the 47 percent myth out of the water

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/14/business/economy/14leonhardt.html

 

To be intellectually fair if you are going to include social security taxes as a tax burden then you also have to consider social security benefits (and Medicare) as a tax credit in that equation.

 

Is smallpo really this much of a pea brain?

 

Just apologize and move on.

 

What if you die before you receive those benefits?

From that article:

"I realize that it’s possible to argue that payroll taxes should be excluded from the discussion because they pay for benefits — Social Security and Medicare — that people receive on the back end. But that argument doesn’t seem very persuasive.

Why? People do not receive benefits equal to the payroll taxes they paid. Those who die at age 70 will receive much less in Social Security and Medicare than they paid in taxes. Those who die at 95 will probably get much more. "

 

Sorry.