• MordercaSkurwysyn@lemm.ee
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    5 hours ago

    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 she 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.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    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.

  • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
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    8 hours 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?

    • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
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      6 hours 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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          3 minutes 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, and even mannerism; if they hadn’t both been alive at the same time it almost might make me believe in reincarnation.

  • joel_feila@lemmy.world
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    10 hours 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

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    9 hours 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

  • billwashere@lemmy.world
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    11 hours 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?

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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    15 hours 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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      5 hours 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.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

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

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      15 hours ago

      This all boils down to a common misconception about ‘tax brackets’.

      To simplify, pretend there’s a 28% tax bracket up to 100,000 dollars, and a 33% tax bracket when you hit 100k. The first 100k is always taxed at 28%, no matter what you make, and it’s only the incremental amount that gets taxed heavier. So here in this example, that would mean tax burden would be 28,000.33 instead of 28,000.28. These are not the exact brackets or percentages, but it’s at least showing the right magnitude of increase versus total amount.

      However, many people are “afraid” of bumping a higher tax bracket. They think the tax bill would go from 28,000.28 to 33,000.33. That the tax bracket bumps up all your liability. I remember growing up people saying “I have to watch out and not hit the bigger tax bracket, if I’m close then I need a big raise to make it worth it, or else the raise is going to cost me more than it would make me”. This a big driver of antipathy toward democrat tax policies, a belief that mild success will punish them, despite it only increasing on the incremental amount.

      • Lyrl@lemm.ee
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        11 hours ago

        A lot of US benefits have “benefit cliffs” where making $1 more substantially reduces or even completely disqualifies a person from programs like SNAP (food stamps) or childcare subsidies or Medicaid. https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs

        It’s not surprising people whose families are directly affected by, or who know people affected by, benefit cliffs think the lawmakers set up taxes the same way.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          True, though if we are talking about tax bracket going over 30 percent, that would be at nearly 200k, so well above those thresholds too. Of course the numbers aren’t 28 and 33, but that is the closest threshold to the example.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
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        14 hours ago

        To be more specific the first 100,000 isn’t taxed at 28%. The 44 to 100k range would be, but below that will be taxed at lower percentages. The first ~10k you make is taxed at 10%, and then it increases throughout.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
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          14 hours ago

          If getting specific, there’s no 28 percent or 33 percent bracket, so these are all examples rather than real figures. I did make a comment using real numbers, same general magnitude but just more specific about the brackets.

      • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        OK, so it is similar to our system. And would probably in the range of cents or a few dollars then.

  • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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    22 hours ago

    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.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.world
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      34 minutes ago

      it’s just not the US. I live in the Netherland and many people here think OT and bonuses are taxed differently, because they see a higher tax rate applied to it on their slip. They forget that their base salary covers multiple brackets and a tax credit. Thus has a lower average tax rate than their OT and bonuses which falls in their top bracket or even a bracket above.

    • sfu@lemm.ee
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      5 hours ago

      I’ve had jobs (more than one), where working OT would result in my paycheck take home pay being less than if I had not worked the extra hours. And that’s because it moved me into the next bracket, and more taxes were taken out. So why waste my time working OT?

    • arrow74@lemm.ee
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      20 hours ago

      Oddly enough it kinda does. OT can make you pay out more taxes on that one check since withholdings are calculated by check. Basically the government/payroll system thinks you’re going to be making that every week so more taxes will be taken out.

      In reality this only effects the size of your tax bill or return at the end of the year.

      • shalafi@lemmy.world
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        15 hours ago

        That’s what people see and exactly why they think they got kicked up a whole tax bracket.

      • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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        13 hours ago

        Nah. He’s not an idiot. But he is impatient. He doesn’t handle paperwork or anything involving patience well. (ADHD)

        I also think taxes in the US are intentionally over complicated and confusing. I don’t struggle with things like that but I can empathize with people who do.

        • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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          13 hours ago

          Strictly speaking the taxes in the US are not that complicated, but the credits, deductions and what not are. Still Tomato Tomato.

      • alkbch@lemmy.ml
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        19 hours ago

        There’s not enough information provided to reach this conclusion.

          • alkbch@lemmy.ml
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            19 hours ago

            No, there is not. There are many tax credits one is no longer eligible for after a certain threshold. There are various programs one is no longer eligible for after a certain threshold.

            • jj4211@lemmy.world
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              15 hours ago

              Most of the likely credits tend to phase out gracefully. So it’s true that we can’t be certain, based on my experience of when people are afraid of making too much money, it’s almost always because they think a higher tax bracket applies flatly across their income not due to nuanced understanding of tax credit and welfare benefits.

              • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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                13 hours ago

                This is true for many people I’ve talked to, but he does understand, on a basic level, how the brackets work. When it comes to the calculation parts, I think he gets frustrated with all the rules.

                But it’s okay! I’m good at stuff like that and he can build pretty much anything. We all have our strengths. :)

                • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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                  5 hours ago

                  Hellllll yeahhhh!!!

                  Yooo is he visual?

                  Awww I thought for sure we were gonna have the perfect diagram thing…

                  Bah. So maybe there’s some YouTube video where they’re like “Bob made $50,000 last year. This year he took some extra construction shifts and made $75,000. …”

                  I don’t care about the partner’s weaknesses I demand clever solutions :p hehe glad everything is good!! 💙


                  Edit with silly riff that’s probably inaccurate:

                  I’m kiddddding this was just the evil thought when I first read it :p

      • YarHarSuperstar@lemmy.world
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        7 hours ago

        Nah. There’s good people here and even the people who voted for this deserve to have their needs met, many of then are only personally responsible for a tiny fraction of the immense harm caused by the systems of power. And they may not have caused any harm if they lived in a place where people are always taken care of as well as is reasonably possible. there is immense pressure to shed empathy and embrace individualism and forego the many benefits of community such as efficient and effective collaboration, for example to prevent a disease from spreading or at least reducing the harm it causes. As many of us can see, especially obviously in the US, the goal and function of the system isn’t actually to stop causing harm in the first place, or even reduce the harm that must be caused for your society to function, the cruelty is often very much the point. Non-absolutely essential needs are less and less profitable to meet the less common it is to have the need, and the amount of wealth that can be extracted from the people with whatever need is the only thing that really determines what gets things done, and subjugation and not giving folks a chance to think critically and question their circumstances by completely overwhelming them with horrible information (including dis- or misinformation) about the world and making them think they’re threatened by whoever is opposing efforts to make line go up. Most folks don’t stand a chance without direct intervention and time spent with someone directly affected by the system in an obvious way, including possibly the person themselves.

        At the very least I owe it to my family to stay and be as helpful as possible to the people who have supported me and hopefully others who don’t deserve what’s coming if a major effort of community organization doesn’t happen

      • underwire212@lemm.ee
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        13 hours ago

        We all have our weaknesses and faults. No need to dismiss every relationship due to imperfections.

      • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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        14 hours ago

        Nah. He’s not a bad person or a dummy. He just gets frustrated by bureaucracy and doesn’t have the patience I have.

        • recall519@lemm.ee
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          9 hours ago

          It’s not the fear of bureaucracy that is concerning, it’s the lack of interest to listen to your sound advice on a relatively simple topic.

          • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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            6 hours ago

            That’s fair. I appreciate your concern for me!

            He’s not always like that. I didn’t mean to make him sound like a jerk. I just meant to relate to the topic of tax confusion with personal experience.

            He had pretty severe ADHD and struggles with some topics. It’s okay! I deal with the money stuff and he cooks dinner. :)

        • w3dd1e@lemm.ee
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          14 hours ago

          Yeah, I definitely didn’t leave this in school. I know about it from reading articles on tax brackets. _(‘’)/

  • Kuranashi@lemmy.world
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    1 day 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.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
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      5 hours ago

      If you ever wanted proof […] here it is.

      Yes! Well yes but also no but only because…

      @[email protected] I always do the web search when OP didn’t happen to think about linking a source but this is egregious DANGIT IT’S A SHITPOST I AM SO SORRY

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
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      1 day 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.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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        17 hours ago

        One of those rage bait YouTube channels had a young person who made that claim in a debate. Pictured is Sam Seder who was the debate opponent. He made this face at the camera.

        • AA5B@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          That was an entertaining 90 minutes of YouTube! And I definitely saw that face

        • KombatWombat@lemmy.world
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          15 hours ago

          The channel is Jubilee. The format is that 1 fairly prominent political activist debates 20 people with an opposing position for a few claims the 1 has given beforehand. The 20 swap out who gets to debate at any particular time by voting them out.

          I’ll admit it is ragebaity sometimes, but I also find it educational and entertaining. There’s typically about two among the 20 that have gone off the deep end, but everyone else is respectful and appreciative of the opportunity to engage the other side. Also, it does have good fact-checking so the crazies are at least recognized properly.

          This is the video the image came from.

          • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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            13 hours ago

            They give Nazis a platform. I don’t watch it because of that. Plus I try to avoid rage bait content as much as I can.

    • AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      22 hours ago

      That dude would have been hilarious if he wasn’t really so delusional. Not Sam, he was great. The dude that was convinced that government agencies get tax breaks.

  • ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

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

    • General_Effort@lemmy.worldOP
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      24 hours ago

      FWIW globally, there is the issue of “welfare traps”. Benefits for low income people are usually tied to income (or savings). Once income reaches a threshold, these benefits must be replaced with income. So a higher income may result in a net loss.