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But they are not including payroll tax of %15.3 that is paid on every dollar of income UNDER $106,000 They call this tax Social Security but it is just a tax l

• anamax 16y ago
  > They call this tax Social Security but it is just a tax like any other. SSI is collected like a tax, but, unlike almost every other tax, the money collected is mostly returned to the payer. (Folks who didn't pay much get much better return than folks who paid a lot.)
  • _delirium 16y ago
    This will only be true if, as seems increasingly unlikely, the social-security surpluses accumulated over the past few decades are actually used to fund social security (the mythical "lockbox"). My bet is on the money never being returned to the social-security system. In that case, the surplus portion of the payroll taxes from the past few decades should be historically reclassified as (regressive) general income taxes.
  • krschultz 16y ago
    But it is also the only regressive tax we have, as all income over a certain amount is untaxed. So it ends up being a really complicated curve of who gets what return on their money, so the super rich and the super poor get the best deal, while the middle class gets hosed.