• Owl@lemm.ee
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    2 months ago

    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?

    • AngryPancake@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      The options were that your taxes go up by a small amount or substantially. The correct answer is by a small amount since you only pay higher taxes on the one dollar that you’re over.

      • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de
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        2 months ago

        took me a minute to realize that, too. The wording is just not too good in the graph. “Your tax bill would go up small amount” is not a proper sentence. I would have expected yes/no (which of course makes no sense either).

        The question should have been: “if you earn $1 more now, will you have more or less money after tax?”.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Nah, also you’re never going to lose out on income by making more money.

      Like others said, the only possible exception is if you’re getting government assistance and get kicked off programs you’re in because you went past the cut off. So, as an example, let’s say you’re low income and you get vouchers for school. You could make enough money that you’re no longer eligible for that benefit but the amount you make over the cut off is less than what the benefit was.

      But, that’s a specific situation. At no time will your taxes increase more than whatever additional income you’re getting. Period.

      I’ve tried to explain that too many times now in my life and I’m not even that old. Just a lot of people are bamboozled by propaganda and lies.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    It boggles my mind how many people who have had to pay taxes for decades even, don’t understand how tax brackets work.

    The only time you’ll get screwed on making more is if you were getting some sort of socialized assistance and you make a dollar over the cut off for aid.

  • billwashere@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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?

    • dan@upvote.au
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      2 months ago

      A lot of people don’t know anything about taxes and have their tax return done by an accountant, even if their situation is extremely simple (works one job, no taxable investments or capital gains, no investment properties, no foreign taxes paid).

      • prayer@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Even if they did go through the trouble to do their own taxes, the IRS specifically instructs taxpayers to not calculate it themselves, but rather to use a “tax table” to lookup their income and next to it is listed their income tax amount.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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

  • Kuranashi@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I think this is at least partially the result of intentional propaganda. It benefits the elite greatly if a lot of Americans are screaming against higher top tax rates due to this faulty logic. There are also a lot of anecdotes of people not accepting higher paying job offers or promotions within their company, which also benefits the business owners.

  • joel_feila@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

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

    • bearboiblake@pawb.social
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      2 months ago

      even if people were mega geniuses it wouldn’t matter, money talks, and it talks a lot louder than people

  • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • Davin@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      If the tax bracket for no taxes is $10k, you don’t get taxed if make under that.

      If the tax bracket for 5% is $10-20k, and you made $15k, the first $10k is not taxed, but the $5k is taxed at %5.

      So you would never make $0 after taxes, even if you made it into the hypothetical 100% tax bracket.

      • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        yeah, with how tax brackets actually work, this should be physically impossible, i’m just pointing out that even if it didn’t it would STILL have to be a pretty substantial increase in tax, that you could easily calculate.

  • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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?

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      The big one there is food and housing subsidies. The way way we have it set-up can create a situation where a raise can cost you benefits that are worth more than the raise. With disability benefits there can actually be limits on the amount of money you’re allowed to have in general, which means that disabled people can find themselves in places where not only do they need to avoid trying to find work that they might be able to do, since trying and failing can still make them need to restart the benefits application process or even pay back historical benefits, but they also need to reject gifts above a certain value and can’t prepare for any type of emergency, like a car breakdown.

      It’s annoying because it creates a disincentive to do the things that would help people on assistance actually get off of it, when the people who push for those limits purport to want them for exactly that reason.
      Tapering off benefits as income grows, but at a slower rate than the income growth creates a continuous incentive for a person on benefits to increase their earned income. (If you lose $500 in benefits for every $1000 in income, your $1000 raise still puts $500 extra in your pocket, instead of potentially costing you your entire $8000 food subsidy)

      Can’t do that though, because it doesn’t punish people for the audacity of needing help.

    • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      This is a big factor. A lot of people conflate less benefits with higher taxes because fear-brain just knows they both equal increased hardship in the end. They’re technically wrong but their statistically slightly more active amygdalas are responding to a genuine threat, just one that they’ve been very skillfully misdirected into helping worsen.

        • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          tbh the more I learn and experience that’s most of the human experience. I had a Minister when I was young that said there’s really only two human emotions, fear and love, and that without significant intervention fear pretty much always wins. I’ve been working in psychiatry for almost a decade now and there’s lots of finer points to be made about human psychology but in the end it pretty much all does just boil down to fear and love.

          He was an exceptionally good Minister, to the extent that for while I didn’t understand how common it was for people to be deeply betrayed by a church leader. It was not uncommon for people in the community to genuinely compare him to Fred Rogers (who was incidentally also a Presbyterian minister). Very similar background, temperament, points of advocacy, and even appearance and mannerism; if they hadn’t both been alive at the same time it almost might make me believe in reincarnation.

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    How dumb do you have to be? By the time you make that much money you should, in theory, know the answer definitively or have a guy.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      Almost everyone has a guy or uses some software. Those two things don’t help them understand and this misconception of how taxes work is but a small sample of how people form political decisions without any viable understanding of the situation they’re in or the repercussions of their actions.

      Nobody’s just making out a check for 30% and mailing it off to the IRS.

  • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    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

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        But you have to keep it going to highlight how much wealthier people pay (although that’s tougher since their income is not “income”). Maybe throw in a few examples of the wealthiest Americans and wha recent age they pay, to not only clarify it, but retarget their anger where it belongs

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Would have to be mandated by workplace regulations, no company is going to voluntarily educate their employees that more money has no downside.

        I’ll also say this doesn’t help, it strangely avoids the actual numbers. It should state explicitly that his total taxes would be $1,600+$4,266+$2,827=$8692, and not $13200. Needs to include the scenarios specific results and contrasted with what the viewer would have assumed otherwise.

    • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      We covered how taxes are calculated at school, it isn’t very complicated. Yet SO MANY people insist they end up getting paid more it made me question myself for a while.

      Although sometimes the removal of certain benefits does mean people can be worse off for £1 extra. Which if anything is just a sign that the benefits were poorly thought out and should taper off instead of being a hard limit.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        2 months ago

        There is probably sticker shock involved. Someone who gets a raise will see a new amount of taxes witheld and may be upset. It could even be they didn’t know what the amount taken out before taxes was.

    • hansolo@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      Short of doing a demo with rolls of change or MnMs or something, asking people to conceptualize math that is not just simple addition is often asking too much. Especially when people’s financial literacy is learned at home from people who retired in 1996.

    • thermal_shock@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Seen the same bullshit when I worked retail. Nothing will convince them.

      It’s easier to trick someone than it is to convince them they’re wrong.

    • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works
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      2 months ago

      The only way that’s a problem is if you’re on certain government benefits, if you make just a little bit too much there’s a hard cutoff for many benefits so you may end up losing more than you made in OT. But if your staff is facing this dilemma, they need to be paid more.

      • theangryseal@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Pay them more? So they can lose their benefits? Are you crazy?

        I’m kidding, of course. I know that what you mean is, “pay them so that they can afford to live without requiring benefits.”

        You get into some of the poorer places in the country though, that truly would be nearly impossible for most businesses. There are some places in West Virginia that would immediately have no access to gasoline, groceries, etc.

        It is crazy to think that Bobby McBusinessman gets to ride around in a giant RV all summer because the government pays his employees. They don’t see it that way though, as they collect their HUD payments and accept food stamps while all of their employees receive food stamps and medical benefits.

        All while the rest of the community lives on nothing and experiences very little joy in this life.

        What do I know though? I’m just a pissed off hillbilly who helped make someone who isn’t me very rich.

    • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      every day, my theory that people are just willfully retarded gets proven more and more correct. Even with the tools at the disposal of the modern internet savvy person, nobody tries ANYTHING to verify ANYTHING.

      It’s actually so fucking depressing and i think humanity is joever at this point. I’m not sure how you recover from this point effectively.

      • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 months ago

        I mean in defense of these staff: many of them were not amazingly well educated and were pulling 80-96 hour weeks pretty regularly to earn a livable wage. When were they supposed to do this research?

        • KillingTimeItself@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          whenever they have to time to do normal people shit? Even slow learning is better than no learning, you can learn a lot over a long period of time if you keep at it regularly.

          Perhaps maybe they should spend less time watching their favorite political sock puppets talk about politics, and spend more time actually learning about shit that’s important and matters. Or maybe instead of yelling at people online about their political views, they could spend that time educating themselves instead. Just a proposal.

          • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            2 months ago

            I don’t know what demographic you think these people were. They were by and large African immigrants. It’s weird that you’ve created this boogeyman version of them in your head though

            They would make stuff like jollof rice and share it with everyone. Super nice people. The only politics they ever brought up was one guy I got to know well would talk a lot about how the elections in the Congo at the time (2010ish) were rigged and the leader at the time was concentrating his power; that war was inevitable if someone did not intervene. He apparently was right because the m23 has been going off there, though admittedly I don’t know the full scale of the situation