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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

#71

Post by dgildeh »

ozozozd wrote: post #67

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…

> 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.

:)

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

#72

Post by burdapoint »

robopsychology wrote: post #65
pjc50 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 the…

The NHS is chronically under-funded compared with other western European countries on a per-capita basis. It is one of the most efficient systems in the world in terms of £ in and outcomes out.

The underfunding is the cause of the inefficiencies that you have probably seen. It literally does not have enough staff, buildings, beds, mri machines etc to operate and is constantly fire-fighting.

Yes, it's a big employer, and? It provides health care to 70 million people, of course it is. Why do you think competition would improve things? the US spends more than 2x as much per capita.

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

#73

Post by dave333 »

One way to improve government services is to measure quality somehow like private corporations do. Then there is at least a number that can be optimized instead of just more or less spending. Subjectively as an expat Brit living in California I would say Medicare as provided by Kaiser Permanente is superior to my memories of the 1970s UK NHS.

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

#74

Post by dgildeh »

johnea wrote: post #70

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…

I'm not sure I agree with that statement just looking at our own tax bills...

Also, my point was I feel that I get nothing for my taxes in California already!

I will give California public libraries which I rediscovered recently after Covid, that's probably the only service I appreciate with my tax dollars currently!

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

#75

Post by yieldcrv »

Its pretty easy to mitigate taxes in California

works for other states too but the tax rates won’t be high enough for you to bother looking

If your plan is just earning a salary and saving then you’ll get taxed the highest, the government is literally telling you to do anything else. Risk is rewarded, transactional velocity within the economy is healthier for the economy than tax revenues and the government promotes this via the tax code.

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

#76

Post by jareklupinski »

BigCryo wrote: post #13

Americans 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…

no other nation on earth has tax software that looks like a dating sim, either

https://taxheaven3000.com/

you gotta take the bitter with the sweet

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

#77

Post by zamnos »

mcny wrote: post #9
dgildeh wrote: post #6

Earlier 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…

At the risk of revealing which class I find myself in thanks to an unnamed startup, my most recent transaction had:

    Federal Withholding   37.00%
    California State Tax  10.23%
    Medicare               2.25%
    OASDI                  0.50%
    California VDI         0.07%
taken out for taxes, for a total of 50.05%

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

#78

Post by dgildeh »

jareklupinski wrote: post #76
BigCryo wrote: post #13

Americans 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…

no other nation on earth has tax software that looks like a dating sim, either https://taxheaven3000.com/ you gotta take the bitter with the sweet

Amazing! Turbo Tax Killer!!! :)

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

#79

Post by yucky »

BigCryo wrote: post #13

Americans 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…

Probably why we pay lower taxes than every one else though..

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

#80

Post by Symbiote »

robopsychology wrote: post #49
tebbers wrote: post #30

As a Brit this article is laughable. People are literally dying in the UK because so called wonderful 'free' public healthcare doesn't have the ambulances to send to them. Tons of potholes everywhere too. Outside London and major cities, public transport is non-existent to very poor.

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…

NI primarily pays for unemployment benefits, state pension etc. You can't compare the NI numbers with health insurance.
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