8 ms·

Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. What is your definition of "middle class"? Someone making $400k is most c

by gzer0 5y ago

Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. What is your definition of "middle class"? Someone making $400k is most certainly in the top 1%. What tax changes have occurred so far in the past few decades that are significantly affecting you? I would genuinely like to know

mattnewton 5y ago
Not OP, but the removal of the SALT deduction hurt.
- gautamcgoel 5y ago
  Can you expand on that please?
  - mattnewton 5y ago
    The 2017 “tax cuts” partially eliminated deductions for state and local taxes, capping them at 10k. This means people in high cost of living, high tax states effectively get taxed on income multiple times instead of being able to discount the money they already paid to state and local taxes above 10k. https://taxfoundation.org/tax-basics/salt-deduction/ https://taxfoundation.org/tax-basics/salt-deduction/
  - cortesoft 5y ago
    SALT is “state and local tax”... you can deduct state and local taxes from your federal taxes, but a few years ago they put a cap on it so you can only deduct $10,000. This really hurt tax payers in higher tax states.
    - ghufran_syed 5y ago
      I pay more now because of the SALT cap, but I still support the idea - why should residents of low tax states subsidize residents of high tax states, all other things being equal?
      - dragonwriter 5y ago
        > I pay more now because of the SALT cap, but I still support the idea - why should residents of low tax states subsidize residents of high tax states, all other things being equal? Under a federalist, state-first system, the federal government shouldn’t consider mandated transfers to state (including administrative subdivisions) government which plays the primary role in the conditions of local commerce which enables income as part of the free income of a taxpayer subject to taxation (this also avoids federal taxes altering the calculus of net benefit in state democratic decisionmaking on tax and spending.) In a federal-first, centralized system, ignoring state taxes consistently makes sense. In either case, a limited SALT deduction has no principled justification, and is simply an effort to use the power of federal tax policy to put a federal thumb on the scales of state decisionmaking to get the successful states whose economic success makes them net contributors to the federal government to adopt tax and spending policies more like those characterizing the politically-overrepresented but less successful states that are net drains on federal resources, leveling the playing field by making every place suck equally, so at least the former can’t make the latter look so bad any more, while advancing the Norquistian vision of shrinking the size of government to where it can be drowned in a bathtub, without concern for thr consequences, because ideology.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
      Let's be precise here. It only hurt tax payers whose itemized deductions exceeded the (new) standard deduction of $12k. There were more them in higher tax states because SALT was part of their itemized deduction. It had no impact on tax payers whose itemized deductions were below $12k, or who did not itemize.
- toast0 5y ago
  Yeah that was a good one; promise a tax cut for the rich, and give a slight tax cut to the rich in low tax states and screw people in high tax states (which happen to mostly be were the proposer of the tax cut didn't get votes anyway). On the plus side, between the limit on SALT deduction and the increased standard deduction, the mortgage interest deduction is almost effectively dead; which is something that has needed to get removed, but nobody wanted to do it. Now it's technically there, but almost useless, so best of both worlds.
  - ixacto 5y ago
    Why should people in states that do not have an income tax have to effectively subsidize the SALT tax deduction? Maybe it will make ca/ny think twice about having such high tax rates…
    - philjohn 5y ago
      Do they fund the SALT deduction? NY and CA pay more in taxes to the Federal government than they receive back in inward investment. Sounds like it's the states with no state tax that are being subsised to me.
      - ixacto 5y ago
        WA/TX/FL do not have an income tax and still pay more to the Federal Government than they receive. IMO the SALT deduction is a horrible thing and allows state governments to become way too bloated.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Except for the fact that landlords still have the full mortgage interest deduction (as is proper for any business loan in a system that taxes income/profit) meaning it’s harder for owner-occupants to bid against them for housing.
lend000 5y ago
The fact that there are people making 10,000 times as much as the highest bracket in a single year suggests whoever is proposing these tax laws does not actually want to solve the problem. There should be brackets going up to a billion dollars, adjusted every time someone makes an order of magnitude more than the highest bracket. Also, making 400K does not make you rich. In California, you are actually bringing home around 200K with high cost of living in areas where an engineer might make that much, whereas the top 1% (measured by household wealth instead of income) still has a net worth of ~$10M.
- rhacker 5y ago
  Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.
  - SvenMarquardt 5y ago
    For most, newfound income does not materialise itself as wealth but rather an increase in living standards. $400k can buy you an entry-level home in cash, or a 10% deposit on that $4M mansion across town. Most choose the latter.
  - foresterh 5y ago
    If you make 400K after taxes and don't spend any of it, you'd have 4M after 10 years...
    - rhacker 5y ago
      It seems like even with taxes... at some point people are sitting on a multi-million dollar property that typical far exceeds the taxes they spent.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    Moreover you can slum it by scraping by on $100k and bank the remainder every year. Most Americans don't have that luxury.
codeecan 5y ago
This is the best lie ever told, "don't worry, these taxes wont affect YOU!". Every new tax inevitably falls onto the middle class, because they can't hire people to restructure their wealth and the poor pay no taxes. Lower taxes makes it less expensive for the rich to pay the government. Look at housing and food costs to see how the middle class are affected, they don't get welfare, social housing, or food stamps.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Aren't you completing dodging the fact that the comment/s above you are pretty obviously talking about income taxes? If you are in between (say) my salary and 400k, no amount of increase in the price of food is going to be a problem for you unless you are ludicrously bad with money. I'm not in favour of wanton taxes aimed at "the rich" as a political manoeuvre, but let's not be blinkered here.
  - codeecan 5y ago
    "Restructure their wealth" poor phrase. Income isn't only salary, you're getting stocks/options. Consultants, not available to the middle class, can optimize your income. CoL increase maybe not a problem, but its still an increase, if you're trying to tax the rich, you've hit the wrong target. After a certain rate, as taxes rise, revenue falls. Feds keep spending, when they realize projected income will fall short, the goal line moves from 400K to 200K, then 100K, etc. We should lower taxes and close the 1000's of loopholes, I would bet revenue goes up. And I learned a new word today, "wanton"!
- hnitbanalns 5y ago
  Nailed it.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
  >Every new tax inevitably falls onto the middle class, because they can't hire people to restructure their wealth and the poor pay no taxes. That might be true of new taxes/tax increases created by those doing the bidding of the truly wealthy. In fact, it is true. But that's true of all possible new taxes, and increasing taxes on those with earned income over $400k will have ZERO impact on those who earn less (in terms of their own taxation).
SvenMarquardt 5y ago
Those taxes will be passed onto the majority in the form of price hikes. Further, with current inflation rates, $400k will be solidly middle-upper class in a few years from now.
closeparen 5y ago
Owns a reasonable home in a decent school district with a commute around 30 minutes. Eats out a few times a month. Takes 1-2 vacations a year. If upper middle class, savings adequate to gradually upgrade housing, send kids to University of State, etc. If regular middle class, home will be maintained against entropy and kids will take out student loans. Either way, will retire at the usual time. In some places $400k can give 8 families this life. In others not even one. It depends.
- gzer0 5y ago
  > In some places $400k can give 8 families this life. In others not even one. It depends. Can you name a place, anywhere in the world, where $400k/yr is not enough to survive for one family?
  - jiminymcmoogley 5y ago
    inside a volcano
- EB66 5y ago
  > In some places $400k can give 8 families this life. In others not even one. It depends. Ummm, where exactly in the world is $400k per year not enough to survive? Monaco? If you earn $400k year after year, then you are earning enough to be "rich". But true, it's still possible to live beyond your means regardless of how much you earn and incur financial difficulty.
  - closeparen 5y ago
    There’s a wide world between “survive” and the lifestyle I described. A wider universe between that lifestyle and “rich.” In San Francisco it's just about striking distance to the lifestyle I described. The commutes and the housing are generally a little worse.
    - EB66 5y ago
      In San Francisco a family can absolutely make do with $400k annual income, have a home, go to decent schools, put kids through college, save for retirement, etc. You wouldn't have to live in and commute from Oakland. You could still amass sufficient wealth to be considered "rich" by the time you retire. Average household income in SF is something near $135k. $400k is well well above that. However, as I mentioned above, that same family (or even one that earns millions more) could easily put themselves into financial difficulty if they live beyond their means. With $400k annual income you couldn't buy a single family home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood and if you had many children perhaps you couldn't afford to send them all to Harvard, but if you lived reasonably within your means you could certainly still be considered "rich".
AndrewKemendo 5y ago
There's quite a few of us here making more more than 400k/year but less than Billion dollar money. My effective tax rate between state and federal is something like 55% before including sales taxes. These Billionaires find ways to pay basically nothing in tax because their wealth comes from capital gains and not from RSU + salary compensation which are taxed as normal salary. The bulk of the burden of new tax increases will fall on people like me who make more than 400k but make it in easy to tax ways instead of changing the law and making it easier to heavily tax people in the 100M/yr+ category These aren't complaints, just facts.
- MattRix 5y ago
  There should definitely be efforts made to figure out how to tax those billionaires (and there are!), but that doesn’t mean that those making $400k shouldn’t be taxed way more as well. Let’s be honest, your life won’t change in any meaningful way because of this.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- jcheng 5y ago
  > My effective tax rate between state and federal is something like 55% before including sales taxes. That seems extremely high, what state is this? Do you mean the top marginal rate, or is that literally the effective rate when you file your 1040?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- benhurmarcel 5y ago
  And my effective tax rate on the total my employer pays is 52% (excluding VAT), and I earn at least 6 times less than you. I’m in Europe so public services include more than the US, but paying 55% on $400k isn’t something to complain about. You’re very rich, you get taxed as such.
prestigious 5y ago
Canadian here can’t really comment on US taxes but our PM Justin Trudeau elected on demonizing the 1% but then promptly cut tax credits on children sports, public transit, child credits, etc while doing nothing to his billionaire buddies so certainly sounds familiar from up here.
- cperciva 5y ago
  Don't forget "raised taxes on the highest income Canadians while claiming that he was raising taxes on the wealthiest Canadians". He has been repeating that lie for five years now.
sokoloff 5y ago
In my state (MA), it takes $473K in individual income to crack the top 1%. Household, the figure is $678K to make top 1%. Figures for CA seem only slightly lower.
briandear 5y ago
> Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. Someone making over $400k might want to invest some of that money. The businesses in which that person would have invested would hire people. And pay wages. And taxes. If you take more of the “rich” money. They won’t invest as much. And thus won’t create value. Giving that money to the government doesn’t create value — or if it does, there is still the issue of deadweight loss. The private sector always spends more efficiently than government. Every rich person I know doesn’t put their money under the mattress; they invest it in something. As far as tax changes that affect me: well the very high rates of California taxation led me to moving my residence and business to Texas. When I lived overseas, the Biden-supported, Obama-signed FACTA legislation (which was ultimately a tax law) had a very significant impact. I couldn’t open business bank accounts in the UK which led me to not being able to expand my (then) consulting business because our potential client required a UK company and that company needed a UK bank account in order to get anything done. Since I wasn’t a UK resident, it made it even harder. I am not super rich so Barclays and friends weren’t going to go through all the FATCA hoops just for my £100k per year in turnover. And in terms of tax changes that helped? The Trump tax cuts resulted in a significant amount of savings that led to buying an airplane and significant production equipment, for example, being able to deduct a significant amount on an aircraft purchase — an aircraft that we wouldn’t have been able to afford without the change in the tax laws. That aircraft enabled my business to expand into smaller markets, which benefited those smaller markets in which we entered (they could get our product cheaper and resell it at a greater profit.) We could also target smaller towns that would have otherwise required flying commercial and then driving all day — then there was the issue of moving cargo quickly. Also the tax savings on equipment purchases allowed us to not have to pay copackers and instead set up our own bottling facility. Which lowered our cost per unit, allowing us to lower our wholesale prices, which led to our customers being able to make a larger profit. (Our business is making specialized fitness cleaning products and our customers are small boutiques and fitness studios.) It’s very short sighted to see taxes that are paid only by “someone else.” If you run any sort of business at all, the effects of tax policy can be immediately evident. The typical wage worker doesn’t see it because they limit themselves to their immediate viewpoint: they fail to see the chain of transactions that lead to them having a job in the first place. An employed person has more economic impact than an unemployed person. That’s just a fact. So yes, tax policy is felt by everyone, even those that don’t pay taxes.
pmorici 5y ago
"Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you." That's not true. If your combined income with your spose is more than 400k the tax increase will affect you. so it will affect individuals making as little as 200k if you assume income is divided equally between two spouses.

by gzer0 5y ago

mattnewton 5y ago

Not OP, but the removal of the SALT deduction hurt.

gautamcgoel 5y ago
Can you expand on that please?
- mattnewton 5y ago
  The 2017 “tax cuts” partially eliminated deductions for state and local taxes, capping them at 10k. This means people in high cost of living, high tax states effectively get taxed on income multiple times instead of being able to discount the money they already paid to state and local taxes above 10k. https://taxfoundation.org/tax-basics/salt-deduction/ https://taxfoundation.org/tax-basics/salt-deduction/
- cortesoft 5y ago
  SALT is “state and local tax”... you can deduct state and local taxes from your federal taxes, but a few years ago they put a cap on it so you can only deduct $10,000. This really hurt tax payers in higher tax states.
  - ghufran_syed 5y ago
    I pay more now because of the SALT cap, but I still support the idea - why should residents of low tax states subsidize residents of high tax states, all other things being equal?
    - dragonwriter 5y ago
      > I pay more now because of the SALT cap, but I still support the idea - why should residents of low tax states subsidize residents of high tax states, all other things being equal? Under a federalist, state-first system, the federal government shouldn’t consider mandated transfers to state (including administrative subdivisions) government which plays the primary role in the conditions of local commerce which enables income as part of the free income of a taxpayer subject to taxation (this also avoids federal taxes altering the calculus of net benefit in state democratic decisionmaking on tax and spending.) In a federal-first, centralized system, ignoring state taxes consistently makes sense. In either case, a limited SALT deduction has no principled justification, and is simply an effort to use the power of federal tax policy to put a federal thumb on the scales of state decisionmaking to get the successful states whose economic success makes them net contributors to the federal government to adopt tax and spending policies more like those characterizing the politically-overrepresented but less successful states that are net drains on federal resources, leveling the playing field by making every place suck equally, so at least the former can’t make the latter look so bad any more, while advancing the Norquistian vision of shrinking the size of government to where it can be drowned in a bathtub, without concern for thr consequences, because ideology.
  - PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
    Let's be precise here. It only hurt tax payers whose itemized deductions exceeded the (new) standard deduction of $12k. There were more them in higher tax states because SALT was part of their itemized deduction. It had no impact on tax payers whose itemized deductions were below $12k, or who did not itemize.
toast0 5y ago
Yeah that was a good one; promise a tax cut for the rich, and give a slight tax cut to the rich in low tax states and screw people in high tax states (which happen to mostly be were the proposer of the tax cut didn't get votes anyway). On the plus side, between the limit on SALT deduction and the increased standard deduction, the mortgage interest deduction is almost effectively dead; which is something that has needed to get removed, but nobody wanted to do it. Now it's technically there, but almost useless, so best of both worlds.
- ixacto 5y ago
  Why should people in states that do not have an income tax have to effectively subsidize the SALT tax deduction? Maybe it will make ca/ny think twice about having such high tax rates…
  - philjohn 5y ago
    Do they fund the SALT deduction? NY and CA pay more in taxes to the Federal government than they receive back in inward investment. Sounds like it's the states with no state tax that are being subsised to me.
    - ixacto 5y ago
      WA/TX/FL do not have an income tax and still pay more to the Federal Government than they receive. IMO the SALT deduction is a horrible thing and allows state governments to become way too bloated.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Except for the fact that landlords still have the full mortgage interest deduction (as is proper for any business loan in a system that taxes income/profit) meaning it’s harder for owner-occupants to bid against them for housing.

lend000 5y ago

The fact that there are people making 10,000 times as much as the highest bracket in a single year suggests whoever is proposing these tax laws does not actually want to solve the problem. There should be brackets going up to a billion dollars, adjusted every time someone makes an order of magnitude more than the highest bracket. Also, making 400K does not make you rich. In California, you are actually bringing home around 200K with high cost of living in areas where an engineer might make that much, whereas the top 1% (measured by household wealth instead of income) still has a net worth of ~$10M.

rhacker 5y ago
Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.
- SvenMarquardt 5y ago
  For most, newfound income does not materialise itself as wealth but rather an increase in living standards. $400k can buy you an entry-level home in cash, or a 10% deposit on that $4M mansion across town. Most choose the latter.
- foresterh 5y ago
  If you make 400K after taxes and don't spend any of it, you'd have 4M after 10 years...
  - rhacker 5y ago
    It seems like even with taxes... at some point people are sitting on a multi-million dollar property that typical far exceeds the taxes they spent.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  Moreover you can slum it by scraping by on $100k and bank the remainder every year. Most Americans don't have that luxury.

codeecan 5y ago

This is the best lie ever told, "don't worry, these taxes wont affect YOU!". Every new tax inevitably falls onto the middle class, because they can't hire people to restructure their wealth and the poor pay no taxes. Lower taxes makes it less expensive for the rich to pay the government. Look at housing and food costs to see how the middle class are affected, they don't get welfare, social housing, or food stamps.

mhh__ 5y ago
Aren't you completing dodging the fact that the comment/s above you are pretty obviously talking about income taxes? If you are in between (say) my salary and 400k, no amount of increase in the price of food is going to be a problem for you unless you are ludicrously bad with money. I'm not in favour of wanton taxes aimed at "the rich" as a political manoeuvre, but let's not be blinkered here.
- codeecan 5y ago
  "Restructure their wealth" poor phrase. Income isn't only salary, you're getting stocks/options. Consultants, not available to the middle class, can optimize your income. CoL increase maybe not a problem, but its still an increase, if you're trying to tax the rich, you've hit the wrong target. After a certain rate, as taxes rise, revenue falls. Feds keep spending, when they realize projected income will fall short, the goal line moves from 400K to 200K, then 100K, etc. We should lower taxes and close the 1000's of loopholes, I would bet revenue goes up. And I learned a new word today, "wanton"!
hnitbanalns 5y ago
Nailed it.
PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago
>Every new tax inevitably falls onto the middle class, because they can't hire people to restructure their wealth and the poor pay no taxes. That might be true of new taxes/tax increases created by those doing the bidding of the truly wealthy. In fact, it is true. But that's true of all possible new taxes, and increasing taxes on those with earned income over $400k will have ZERO impact on those who earn less (in terms of their own taxation).

SvenMarquardt 5y ago

Those taxes will be passed onto the majority in the form of price hikes. Further, with current inflation rates, $400k will be solidly middle-upper class in a few years from now.

closeparen 5y ago

Owns a reasonable home in a decent school district with a commute around 30 minutes. Eats out a few times a month. Takes 1-2 vacations a year. If upper middle class, savings adequate to gradually upgrade housing, send kids to University of State, etc. If regular middle class, home will be maintained against entropy and kids will take out student loans. Either way, will retire at the usual time. In some places $400k can give 8 families this life. In others not even one. It depends.

gzer0 5y ago
> In some places $400k can give 8 families this life. In others not even one. It depends. Can you name a place, anywhere in the world, where $400k/yr is not enough to survive for one family?
- jiminymcmoogley 5y ago
  inside a volcano
EB66 5y ago
> In some places $400k can give 8 families this life. In others not even one. It depends. Ummm, where exactly in the world is $400k per year not enough to survive? Monaco? If you earn $400k year after year, then you are earning enough to be "rich". But true, it's still possible to live beyond your means regardless of how much you earn and incur financial difficulty.
- closeparen 5y ago
  There’s a wide world between “survive” and the lifestyle I described. A wider universe between that lifestyle and “rich.” In San Francisco it's just about striking distance to the lifestyle I described. The commutes and the housing are generally a little worse.
  - EB66 5y ago
    In San Francisco a family can absolutely make do with $400k annual income, have a home, go to decent schools, put kids through college, save for retirement, etc. You wouldn't have to live in and commute from Oakland. You could still amass sufficient wealth to be considered "rich" by the time you retire. Average household income in SF is something near $135k. $400k is well well above that. However, as I mentioned above, that same family (or even one that earns millions more) could easily put themselves into financial difficulty if they live beyond their means. With $400k annual income you couldn't buy a single family home in the Pacific Heights neighborhood and if you had many children perhaps you couldn't afford to send them all to Harvard, but if you lived reasonably within your means you could certainly still be considered "rich".

AndrewKemendo 5y ago

There's quite a few of us here making more more than 400k/year but less than Billion dollar money. My effective tax rate between state and federal is something like 55% before including sales taxes. These Billionaires find ways to pay basically nothing in tax because their wealth comes from capital gains and not from RSU + salary compensation which are taxed as normal salary. The bulk of the burden of new tax increases will fall on people like me who make more than 400k but make it in easy to tax ways instead of changing the law and making it easier to heavily tax people in the 100M/yr+ category These aren't complaints, just facts.

MattRix 5y ago
There should definitely be efforts made to figure out how to tax those billionaires (and there are!), but that doesn’t mean that those making $400k shouldn’t be taxed way more as well. Let’s be honest, your life won’t change in any meaningful way because of this.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
jcheng 5y ago
> My effective tax rate between state and federal is something like 55% before including sales taxes. That seems extremely high, what state is this? Do you mean the top marginal rate, or is that literally the effective rate when you file your 1040?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
benhurmarcel 5y ago
And my effective tax rate on the total my employer pays is 52% (excluding VAT), and I earn at least 6 times less than you. I’m in Europe so public services include more than the US, but paying 55% on $400k isn’t something to complain about. You’re very rich, you get taxed as such.

prestigious 5y ago

Canadian here can’t really comment on US taxes but our PM Justin Trudeau elected on demonizing the 1% but then promptly cut tax credits on children sports, public transit, child credits, etc while doing nothing to his billionaire buddies so certainly sounds familiar from up here.

cperciva 5y ago
Don't forget "raised taxes on the highest income Canadians while claiming that he was raising taxes on the wealthiest Canadians". He has been repeating that lie for five years now.

sokoloff 5y ago

In my state (MA), it takes $473K in individual income to crack the top 1%. Household, the figure is $678K to make top 1%. Figures for CA seem only slightly lower.

briandear 5y ago

> Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. Someone making over $400k might want to invest some of that money. The businesses in which that person would have invested would hire people. And pay wages. And taxes. If you take more of the “rich” money. They won’t invest as much. And thus won’t create value. Giving that money to the government doesn’t create value — or if it does, there is still the issue of deadweight loss. The private sector always spends more efficiently than government. Every rich person I know doesn’t put their money under the mattress; they invest it in something. As far as tax changes that affect me: well the very high rates of California taxation led me to moving my residence and business to Texas. When I lived overseas, the Biden-supported, Obama-signed FACTA legislation (which was ultimately a tax law) had a very significant impact. I couldn’t open business bank accounts in the UK which led me to not being able to expand my (then) consulting business because our potential client required a UK company and that company needed a UK bank account in order to get anything done. Since I wasn’t a UK resident, it made it even harder. I am not super rich so Barclays and friends weren’t going to go through all the FATCA hoops just for my £100k per year in turnover. And in terms of tax changes that helped? The Trump tax cuts resulted in a significant amount of savings that led to buying an airplane and significant production equipment, for example, being able to deduct a significant amount on an aircraft purchase — an aircraft that we wouldn’t have been able to afford without the change in the tax laws. That aircraft enabled my business to expand into smaller markets, which benefited those smaller markets in which we entered (they could get our product cheaper and resell it at a greater profit.) We could also target smaller towns that would have otherwise required flying commercial and then driving all day — then there was the issue of moving cargo quickly. Also the tax savings on equipment purchases allowed us to not have to pay copackers and instead set up our own bottling facility. Which lowered our cost per unit, allowing us to lower our wholesale prices, which led to our customers being able to make a larger profit. (Our business is making specialized fitness cleaning products and our customers are small boutiques and fitness studios.) It’s very short sighted to see taxes that are paid only by “someone else.” If you run any sort of business at all, the effects of tax policy can be immediately evident. The typical wage worker doesn’t see it because they limit themselves to their immediate viewpoint: they fail to see the chain of transactions that lead to them having a job in the first place. An employed person has more economic impact than an unemployed person. That’s just a fact. So yes, tax policy is felt by everyone, even those that don’t pay taxes.

pmorici 5y ago

"Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you." That's not true. If your combined income with your spose is more than 400k the tax increase will affect you. so it will affect individuals making as little as 200k if you assume income is divided equally between two spouses.