Great idea to compare "what you pay" vs "what you get" between countries. I'd love to see further analysis downstream: How much revenue per capita each country collects, and how it's allocated. (IIRC, the conventional wisdom is that wealthy Americans are good at legally avoiding taxes, and a disproportionate amount of America's tax money goes to an outsized military and a cost-ineffective healthcare system.)
Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
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Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read the blog I actually explain that. However for middle class tech workers in CA, I can assure you they are
Even if I take you at face value and say you paid an effective tax rate of 43.92% on an income of USD 650k+ (or USD 279.5k+ which I still contend nobody does, unless you do some kind of shady math including all your property taxes and sales taxes and all kinds of nonsense), can you really say with a straight face that people making USD 650k+ a year, year after year are part of the middle class? Who is in the upper cl…
I'm confused what you're getting at. First you say 40% income tax isn't a thing for the wealthy then you refute that this person who pays 40% income tax isn't wealthy? Their response was to say that they aren't part of the upper class, who we're saying are those who have enough wealth to protect most of their income from taxation
You might as well make yourself clearer & instead of saying the wealthy don't pay 40% taxes, just straight up say "dgildeh, you're a liar, you don't pay that much in taxes, post your tax records to prove yourself"
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#13Americans are so dominated psychologically by elite propaganda that they fail to realize that America has this unique tax return torture system designed to extort fees from the people that go to the tax return industrial complex and a portion of that money gets paid back is kickbacks and bribes and fees or whatever to the Congress people that Ensure that the Byzantine tax system never goes away and only gets more complicated every year.. no other Nation on Earth has this tax return torture system and extortion device systematically applied across society
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you read the blog I actually explain that. However for middle class tech workers in CA, I can assure you they are
Even if I take you at face value and say you paid an effective tax rate of 43.92% on an income of USD 650k+ (or USD 279.5k+ which I still contend nobody does, unless you do some kind of shady math including all your property taxes and sales taxes and all kinds of nonsense), can you really say with a straight face that people making USD 650k+ a year, year after year are part of the middle class? Who is in the upper cl…
That's Fussellian upper-middle. Enough to send three kids to $70k/yr private boarding school and from there to an elite university, enough to have a sailing hobby, enough to take annual family ski trips in the Alps. But you're still working for a living, and can't retain a fancy lifestyle if you stop.
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#15One big difference, though, is in the US I believe you can file jointly if you are married and get roughly double the usual range for each tax bracket? That option isn't available in the UK and must surely make a huge difference with high income households.
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#16The key thing here is that Americans see all the stuff in the left hand column as “socialism”. The author sees the relationship between the government providing all those services and a healthy functioning society. Americans do not… again, they see provision of community/common good social services as socialism. Americans don’t see a direct line relationship between “socialism” and tent cities of homeless (though it’…
And many who may want it, do not believe that giving our government more money or power will wnd up with the desired outcome.
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#17One big difference, though, is in the US I believe you can file jointly if you are married and get roughly double the usual range for each tax bracket? That option isn't available in the UK and must surely make a huge difference with high income households.
Well, yes and no.
Single Income Married families have some benefits, or if one party makes a lot less than the other. However there are other disadvantages in some cases; after my first wife got married to me, her financial aid went into the toilet. Even though I was making less than 50k a year myself (and paying enough in student loans/etc that we were barely making ends meet,) that income counted against her. [0]
[0] - Filing separately (as we did once we were separated before our divorce) had it's own disadvanatges; namely that I could no longer declare my student loan interest on my taxes.
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#18Americans are so dominated psychologically by elite propaganda that they fail to realize that America has this unique tax return torture system designed to extort fees from the people that go to the tax return industrial complex and a portion of that money gets paid back is kickbacks and bribes and fees or whatever to the Congress people that Ensure that the Byzantine tax system never goes away and only gets more com…
Why I’ll never work for intuit
Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#19The key thing here is that Americans see all the stuff in the left hand column as “socialism”. The author sees the relationship between the government providing all those services and a healthy functioning society. Americans do not… again, they see provision of community/common good social services as socialism. Americans don’t see a direct line relationship between “socialism” and tent cities of homeless (though it’…
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Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK
#20The key thing here is that Americans see all the stuff in the left hand column as “socialism”. The author sees the relationship between the government providing all those services and a healthy functioning society. Americans do not… again, they see provision of community/common good social services as socialism. Americans don’t see a direct line relationship between “socialism” and tent cities of homeless (though it’…
And many who may want it, do not believe that giving our government more money or power will wnd up with the desired outcome.
I’m in this boat. Living in California and seeing how far our tax dollars go (or rather don’t) us not inspiring