Is 33 cents a small amount of money?

If you ever wanted proof that a population that doesn't understand math allows the billionaires to take advantage of them here it is. This is why education systems are under attack, because if you understood how taxes work you'd more likely support higher tax rates for the rich.

This is the problem. My partner doesn’t want to work OT because he thinks it will cost him more in taxes. I explain why that’s not exactly true, but I can tell he’s not interested. Financial Literacy in the US is abysmal.

I used to be a supervisor at a psych hospital and had to regularly explain this to staff who were refusing overtime. They wanted to do it, sometimes desperately so because they needed the money, but they were utterly convinced that once they crossed 40 or 45k or whatever they would be taxed higher and make it all pointless. I felt like some just didn’t want to do ot, which was fine, but some legit keep meticulous records of their earnings to ensure they wouldn’t go over the line. I swore to them it didn’t work this way but they never believed me

try telling this to people who think government agencies pay taxes

This is absolutely an educational failing. We barely cover taxes in school. At best it's said once in a class, gets covered in a minor question on a test and if we get it wrong, no one notices. "We" probably still got a B on the test without any CLUE how taxes work.

Yet here we are, dismantling any nationwide effort to make education better.

A LOT of people think 99,999 tax is 27,999 and 100,001 is 29,000, even on the democrat side. If those charts are accurate, it's probably damn close to 50% of US citizens.

Where i live we have a system where if you take sick days, they are paid 80%. 20% reduction applies only to the days you were sick. Once I got sick at the end of a month and took the last 3 days of the month and first 2 days of the next one off and my mother in law freaked out I'm about to loose 20% of 2 month's salaries. She was and is still convinced that 20% deduction applies to a whole month worth of salary even if you take one day off that month. She almost never takes sick days and she works in a hospital... She self medicates and works with patients even when she has a transmittable diseases. Best of luck to those who have serious health problems and then get a fucking flu on top of everything from hospital staff. She is 60+ and reading the law to her doesn't change her mind. A couple years ago she had more serious health problems and took a week off for the first time in decades, even after getting a paycheck reduced only by 5% and not 20% her perception of this issue didn't change. She misunderstood that system once 40 years ago and she is going to take that misunderstanding to ger grave. Real world has no influence on her beliefs.

And they'll also refuse to believe you when you try to explain it to them

Hungary used to have a system, which worked like what the republicans imagined, which made "taxing the rich more" a widely unpopular move...

And this why democracy won't work. How can people votw in their best interests when they don't know how basic taxes work

For someone outside the American tax system, can anyone put the difference in approximate numbers?

No source?

These people are allowed to vote, and that is why we are all fucked.

this was pushed in the 80's/90's on conservative talk radio (iirc). strangely, it gets an ideological push from the phenomenon of income reduction resulting from lost welfare benefits as income increases. the brain correlates things irrationally.

I'm just in awe about those 28% and 33% tax brackets. I'm in the 49,5% bracket here in The Netherlands. That being said, I'm fortunate to be in it.

When you are talking large income to larger income, that makes total sense, but are there limits for access to things like child tax credits where if you go over you are no longer eligible, causing significant increase (I just looked, and it's at $200k single of $400k jointly, so unless you have A LOT of children, I suppose there wouldn't be a huge effect)? Similar to people on government assistance who go from getting full assistance to getting nothing at a certain income level?

Tell me you don’t know how income taxes work without telling me you don’t know how income taxes work.

My question is who does their taxes then?

Thanks, Lemmy, now I’m “that Dad”. After reading this, I went to dinner with my two teens and one of their girlfriends, so of course I had to bring this up. All three have started working after school and will need to file their taxes this year so they need to know.

But holy crap is that a seriously uncool conversation

That’s a loaded question. Poor methodology.

Shouldn't it be physically possible to be taxed so much that your income lowers compared to what it was previously?

Like you would have to have a 20% bump in pay, and an increase in taxes that's like 25-50% or something insane. Of course if you cherry pick data, and pick a high ceiling, and then just barely pass a threshold you can probably make it appear, but that would be a pretty well defined statistical anomaly. And, not very much money.

edit: and this is assuming that taxes literally just don't work the way that they do, this is WITH broken tax logic.

of course, the idea of a progressive income tax is that at a certain point, it becomes untenable to hold so much money. But unless taxes are literally 100% it's hard to make the argument that you're "losing" money.

lol i wonder how much that is just guessing. they just coin flipped it

Hmmm, I better send a suggestion letter to the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) to put the tax bracket breakdown directly into your return with the amounts populated.

Hey, they give us a breakdown graph of where our tax is going, this seems like it's within the realm of possibility.

I think sadly there are also many people here who have no idea how tax brackets work...

i dont understand, isnt this graph showing that 2/3 of democrats dont understand how taxes work vs only 1/3 of republicans? wouldnt correct mean that yes, your tax bill goes up?