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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

#61

Post by thephyber »

xboxnolifes wrote: post #16
andrewstuart wrote: post #10

The 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.

It’s worth looking at why the UK (and Germany and Japan) were able to provide these services at a reasonable cost while the US can’t.

All of those countries rebuilt their social contracts after WW2 ended. The US built the New Deal (which has mostly been dismantled and/or sabotaged since), but we haven’t really changed the social contract or updated most of our welfare / safety net systems for the modern age.

People who want those things simply don’t see how they fit into the current US social contract.

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#62

Post by dgildeh »

mrguyorama wrote: post #55
seanalltogether wrote: post #46

Since moving to the UK I've wanted to do a breakdown of taxes I paid in Colorado vs UK. Even though taxes are higher here and VAT is 20% I'm still convinced I have more income at the end of the year then I would in CO. Some things I've noticed - I surrendered a good chunk of my paycheck to health insurance in the states that's already folded into income tax in UK Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only ne…

This is a bit cheating, as CO is significantly more expensive than other roughly equal areas. Something about the altitude magically makes everything more expensive. My mother's car insurance tripled moving to CO, despite the car being paid off and no accidents on record.

I wasn't expecting CO to come up more expensive, thanks for sharing!

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#63

Post by tyoma »

Also there is no law preventing publicly funded ambulances. The reason they do not exist in some places is because voters (and this is local voters, as police/fire funding is very local) have chosen not to raise taxes to pay for it.

This is an understandable decision because running an ambulance service is expensive and cities/counties would rather have someone else pay for at least a part of it. Here is a nice explanation from the City of Long Beach: https://www.longbeach.gov/finance/services-and-permits/ambul...

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#64

Post by stouset »

dgildeh wrote: post #41
stouset wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And there are penalties for withdrawing before 59.5years, which I would call the "retirement age" on these plans. Sort of, but in practice not really if you're smart about it and plan a bit in advance. If you want to retire early and access 401(k) or traditional IRA funds, you can do so without incurring additional taxes or penalties. The strategy is called a "Roth conversion ladder". It takes advantage of the fact…

Thanks for the info - funnily enough after I posted this I spoke to a tax strategist this morning who also laid out a bunch of things we could do to reduce our tax bill. The problem as you say, is this type of person isn't accessible to most people, and expensive!

/r/personalfinance is a phenomenal resource where this kind of info is freely available, and the advice therein more or less obviates the need for tax strategists and financial advisors for what I'd estimate is something like 80% of people.

There's even crazier options like the Mega Backdoor which require working at a company with an excellent benefits package. When combined with a normal Roth backdoor and an HSA, they allow a high earner to set aside $22,500 in a traditional 401(k) and $50,000 in Roth accounts, for $72,500 in tax-advantaged savings every year. With the information from my previous comment, this means that every year you do this equates to $50,000/yr you can spend in early retirement completely tax- and penalty-free

It's absolutely insane to me and also completely indefensible that simple access to this level of tax-avoidance is available to people based on their employer. Someone who earns the same level of income but at a different employer without a 401(k) only has the opportunity to set aside $6,500 (solely in a Roth IRA). And even doing that requires knowing about the backdoor "trick".

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#65

Post by robopsychology »

pjc50 wrote: post #60
robopsychology wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They moved strokes to a 'Category 2' condition that requires an ambulance to arrive in 45 minutes. Having a father who had a stroke early in his life, this sickens me. My trust in the NHS is minimal and seeing how good the healthcare is in California I will be going private when I return. It is night and day, and my private insurance is less than my NI contributions were in the UK. If I message my doctor on my health…

The NHS needed a chunk of money put into it during COVID and afterwards, but so much was taken by "track and trace" and overt fraud (Michelle Mone etc) that it's struggling with budget and staff. The "£350m a week for the NHS" promised at Brexit never really arrived.

The NHS is the sixth largest organisation by employee-count in the world. At some point I think we have to address the elephant in the room that throwing money at it won't fix it, and we should look to other European countries that have a hybrid public/private system to help push efficiency and cost savings. There's so much inefficiency in the NHS it is mind-boggling and I firmly believe it would be addressed if they started to have to compete. The issue with private healthcare in the UK is they don't have the specialists they need to operate real hospitals - if you have complications in a private hospital they take you to an NHS hospital.

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#66

Post by 999900000999 »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #25
999900000999 wrote: post #21

>We need the basics that deliver true equality, as I experienced growing up in the UK: free healthcare, good public schools, and good public transport. Maybe even ban the private options like they banned To be fair. You picked California. Chicago , NYC, DC and I'm sure one or two other American cities have functioning public transportation. The other two issues will never ever be fixed. Tbh if your quality of life wa…

Having lived in SF, London, Berlin, and now DC, I can tell you that DC's is totally subpar in comparison to any I encountered in Europe. Not only in the year that I've been there have there been multiple shootings on the subway in that time but I can't remember a single instance where I didn't see someone hopping the turnstile and the trains are quite slow (in terms of number of trains per hour).

It's functional, compared to most of the US where public transportation effectively doesn't exist.

I agree Europe is a step above, but to be fair European cities tend to be much more compact. Public transportation can't work well when things are spread out

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#67

Post by ozozozd »

CA taxes get you the privilege to say you're progressive, and that you're not like that other guy. For everything else, use your Mastercard.

We've been spending some time in Turkey since the pandemic and despite all the corruption, we experienced clean streets (swept daily, hardly rocket science), rebuilt roads, rebuilt sidewalks, new bike lanes, maintained gardens/parks, improved broadband, virtually no homelessness. They even tried cleaning the temporary sea snot problem, which seemed a bit like trying to boil the ocean. But A for effort, I thought.

I love CA but also quite heart broken that in over a decade, I've watched San Francisco get more and more expensive, with taxes also going up, and homelessness get more and more prevalent, only to find out that in 2019 they were not letting homeless people with drug issues or dogs in shelters, and complaining about how homeless people "don't wanna go to the shelters." Well, have the operators not seen a single homeless person? I bet having a dog and drug issues is the greatest predictor of homelessness. So the homeless shelter is basically a shelter that doesn't allow any homeless in.

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#68

Post by johnea »

annexrichmond wrote: post #26
BigCryo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see that the tax return industrial complex Shills are downvoting my post

I downvoted you, and I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but it's also tangential to the topic at hand.

Totally on topic. Completely inappropriate downvote...

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#69

Post by freeone3000 »

pjc50 wrote: post #56
seanalltogether wrote: post #46

Since moving to the UK I've wanted to do a breakdown of taxes I paid in Colorado vs UK. Even though taxes are higher here and VAT is 20% I'm still convinced I have more income at the end of the year then I would in CO. Some things I've noticed - I surrendered a good chunk of my paycheck to health insurance in the states that's already folded into income tax in UK Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only ne…

> Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only needs to cover damage to the car instead of hospital bills UK car insurance includes medical cover! It's just not usually called on quite so much and it's cheaper if it is. At one point there was a lot of fraudulent whiplash claims. Maybe the US has a medical expenses insurance fraud problem? > Council tax (property tax) is significantly cheaper here. Council tax…

“ Maybe the US has a medical expenses insurance fraud problem?”

It has a medical expenses problem! ER visits are thousands of dollars even if nothing is wrong! There is a reason coverage is expensive — if it’s ever used, the costs are catastrophic

Re: Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

#70

Post by johnea »

I agreed with the overwhelming majority of this article.

However one serious ommision is the fact that NO ONE who makes $650,000/yr pays $295,000 in income taxes in the US.

That byzantine tax structure is basically in place to insure this.

Personally, I'm a lefty, and I will be the first in line to say that the government of California is massively corrupt. Government is a monopoly, and as such it needs major public review and restrictions in place to prevent corruption. We don't have those review processes, and we don't have those restrictions.

A message to the author: If you think you're getting a bad deal for your taxes in California, try out a red state for size, where you get basically nothing for your tax dollars.

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