Taxes

[heyabbott]

I don't want anyone to feel sorry but I'm doing our taxes and the wife and I are salaried employees, no business deductions or ownership, no way to hide income. Between Federal, State, Local, Medicare and Social Security taxes we had over $50,000 with held from our paychecks. Doesn't include the local utility and property taxes on our house and the 6% sales tax on everything else.

**** THE WELFARE SOCIETY. Problem is we don't make nearly enough money to benefit from republican policies. We don't hit the social security ceiling on income. No one is going to reduce our tax bracket. We get no subsidies, reduced rates, assistance. We get **** for our money.

 

[Inky_Wretch]

Just tell yourself all that money went to something you like. Perhaps the military. Maybe your favorite National Park.

 

[Vombatus]

That's a good mind trick, but you just know a good chunk of it goes to shiftless morons. Maybe even some of my relatives.

 

[Evil ... Thy name is Orville Redenbacher!!]

Welcome to the middle class.

 

[Starman]

Drinking water not laced with fecal coliform bacteria and driving on roads without 8-foot craters has something to recommend itself too.

I also like being able to walk down the street and not having to step over rotting corpses or fight off packs of starvation-crazed predators. Maybe that's just me.

I'm in my mid-50s, don't have kids, never will. My nieces/nephew attend a private grade school and public HS in a district where I don't live anymore. I've been paying in school taxes, indirectly or indirectly, for 40 years, tens of thousands of dollars in total, and yet I don't give a ****. It's nice to be able to carry on a conversation with people on the street and get something more than guttural grunts in response. From some of them.

OH by the way, I remember when I started working in the mid-late Seventies and early Eighties. I made vastly less money than I have in recent years. Yet the tax bite out of those early teeny-weeny paychecks was massively larger (in proportion) then than what I'm paying now.

Sure in a perfect world I'd love to pay no taxes -- zero zip zilch nada. Maybe I'll move to ****in' Somalia to live in my tax-free Nirvana.

 

[ColdCat]

old people and soldiers, that's where your money is going
Policy Basics: Where Do Our Federal Tax Dollars Go? — Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

How much of a refund are you receiving?

 

[SpeedTchr]

Holy crap, abbott, you make a lot of money if you're chipping in 50 large a year.
I pay a huge chunk each year due to no real deductions, etc., but I don't begrudge most of it. I do get peeved when I see "poor" people crowing about their "refunds" as they waste the money on big TVs and other crap, but the benefits of taxes outweigh the negatives.

 

[User 11148]

If you're edging up on the SS max as a couple, you'll be on the hook for about $40K to about $50K. That's about a 20% rate. It's a lot of money, true. But, per many 'round here, that money's the only thing standing between us and ****-infested meals and corpse-riddled highways.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

 

[JayFarrar]

Taxes pay for goods and services that you may or may not use but someone does and there's a reasonably good chance you may use those goods or services in the future.

Those taxes also keep us free, as so much of that money goes to the military.

I spend almost as much on insurance as I do taxes annually, and I get way more for my taxes. Insurance paid for two dental visits annually and one visit to a doc in a box. Woo hoo. While taxes provide a number of real and hidden benefits.

 

[93Devil]

I don't want anyone to feel sorry but I'm doing our taxes and the wife and I are salaried employees, no business deductions or ownership, no way to hide income. Between Federal, State, Local, Medicare and Social Security taxes we had over $50,000 with held from our paychecks. Doesn't include the local utility and property taxes on our house and the 6% sales tax on everything else.

**** THE WELFARE SOCIETY. Problem is we don't make nearly enough money to benefit from republican policies. We don't hit the social security ceiling on income. No one is going to reduce our tax bracket. We get no subsidies, reduced rates, assistance. We get **** for our money.

Whatever you do to make your living, how many of the people paying for your service or product are public or state employees? Teachers, policemen, county workers, federal workers, military...

Take all those customers away, then start bitching about your paying too much in taxes.

 

[Joe Williams]

God damn, people here are comfortable spending other people's money.
Heyabbott doesn't get any more protection from the military or any more benefit from schools than someone making half as much money, but somehow his and his wife's work ethic, expertise and results require that he chip in much more, at a progressively higher rate. What would be wrong with simply going flat-tax, where everyone chipped in 7% (or whatever number folks agreed upon) of each dollar earned -- above a certain floor based on bare necessities?

And if progressive tax rates are so swell, why is there a ceiling to protect the super-rich? Just keep that gouge going up, up, up and see how the elites from both sides of the aisle squeal.

Everybody needs skin in the game. And it's not for government to take excessive amounts of folks' dough and sprinkle it around. Anyone can be the hero spending the other guy's dollars.

 

[MileHigh]

I'll probably get to mine this week, which will be a *****. Two states. A move. Freelance and the subsequent deductions, such as they are. Part-of-the-year rental.

Yes, taxes go to things that I don't see/get in return. Namely property taxes for schools (no kids), but I've been through 8-foot potholes the past week.

Guessing a no-tax, pay-as-you go approach won't fly.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

God damn, people here are comfortable spending other people's money.
Heyabbott doesn't get any more protection from the military or any more benefit from schools than someone making half as much money, but somehow his and his wife's work ethic, expertise and results require that he chip in much more, at a progressively higher rate. What would be wrong with simply going flat-tax, where everyone chipped in 7% (or whatever number folks agreed upon) of each dollar earned -- above a certain floor based on bare necessities?

And if progressive tax rates are so swell, why is there a ceiling to protect the super-rich? Just keep that gouge going up, up, up and see how the elites from both sides of the aisle squeal.

Everybody needs skin in the game. And it's not for government to take excessive amounts of folks' dough and sprinkle it around. Anyone can be the hero spending the other guy's dollars.

The wealthy have their own benefits to having extra "skin in the game" by paying more in taxes. They're allowed to buy more "speech". If they want a flat tax rate, then there can be a small maximium flat amount that anyone can spend on a candidate or election. Say, $1,000 per candidate, $10,000 per election deal. No loopholes. Deal? After all, that'll guarantee that everyone has a reasonably equal chance at promoting a candidate.

 

[trifectarich]

Taxes are supposed to pay for schools, and though I don't know this is the case all around the country, several counties here in Florida now push ballot referendums to add another penny to the sales tax. Quit wasting money in the first place and you wouldn't have to do this.

 

[MisterCreosote]

And it's not for government to take excessive amounts of folks' dough and sprinkle it around.

I'm about as anti-tax as anyone, but this is just false.

It's exactly the government's role, as spelled out in the Constitution.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Outing alert: heyabbott is the father of this University of Michigan student.

My family’s household income is $250,000 a year, but I promise you I am middle class. I live in a $2 million dollar house, but I promise you I am still middle class.

Jesse Klein: Relative wealth - The Michigan Daily

 

[User 11148]

MC, I'd be very interested to know whence comes this Constitutional sanction for redistribution.

 

[LongTimeListener]

Are we sure heyabbott didn't mean to put this on the "First-world problems" thread?