5 ms·

Yes... It's not too common, but it's doable. Most programers make between 120-160 as you said. Honestly, it's a matter of diminishing returns. Your lifestyle

Yes... It's not too common, but it's doable. Most programers make between 120-160 as you said. Honestly, it's a matter of diminishing returns. Your lifestyle is probably not going to change between making 150, and making 200. The tax rates are so absurdly high at that level, you might keep about half of that additional income. Then again, I'm a single person so I imagine if I had a family to support the extra money would matter.

scarface74 5y ago
First please don’t get caught up in the misconception that all of your income is taxed at a higher rate when you make more, it’s just your marginal rate. In fact, from $150 to $206K, your marginal tax rate on anything above $160K only goes up 6% I went from $150K at the beginning of 2020 to around $225K working remotely. At $150K we could do anything we wanted (married grown children) to a point six months later we could do everything we wanted. Meaning with $225K, we could: - “retire my wife” at 45 so she could pursue her passions. - max out my 401K (and soon catch up contributions) and max out my “after tax 401K” with 10% of my base - go on multiple decent vacations a year. - fly my wife out with me on business trips (on my dime) and stay over. - “Date nights” once a week or so. - stay in AirBnbs around the country for weeks at a time just for a change of scenery and work from there. We had to balance those things before. Now we can do all of it. If I made more, it would go toward my less conservative investments - real estate, opening a franchise, etc.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  I don't think they did make that mistake. In Canada at least, if you go from $150k to $225k, you're effectively making $31k more, or about $131k depending on where you live, as an actual employee. Certainly if you make a point of living somewhere incredibly cheap, then that difference will go farther, but the parent here was actually about accurate in saying you'd retain half of the difference. Living in Vancouver or Toronto for example, I'd still not be able to buy a home for quite a long time, and that difference would make a very minimal impact on my lifestyle, if I could hypothetically make that much. It would be preferable to optimize for free time.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    All of the difference between when I made $150K to around $225K came from RSUs. The ones I get the first half of the year are taxed at 40% (12.4% FICA, 2.4% Medicare, 22% Federal, 6% state). The second half don’t get taxed for FICA. That made the difference in our lifestyle. Just for clarification, we pay the employer’s side of FICA on RSUs and I am soon moving to a state that doesn’t tax income. But why is there a belief that you work harder to get paid more? It was a lot more work being a senior dev/de facto “cloud architect” at a 60 person company where everyone look to me for guidance (in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king) than it is being a mid level consultant at a 1.6 trillion dollar company.
    - brailsafe 5y ago
      Definitely not always the case, but quite often you end up needing to take on more responsibility, at least within the same company. The states has different bits that I'm unaware of, but in Canada there's no such thing as not paying income tax, but there are places with lower income tax.
    - ericmay 5y ago
      I see a lot of people say they’re moving to a no-income tax state, but don’t you just make up the difference in fixed taxes like property tax? Maybe California and/or New York are specifically bad in ways I’m not aware of.
      - scarface74 5y ago
        Property taxes are also below average in Florida. A booming tourist industry does wonders.
        ericmay 5y ago
        Does the federal government subsidize flood insurance in Florida too? Wonder if that rug will ever get pulled.
- puffoflogic 5y ago
  > First please don’t get caught up in the misconception that all of your income is taxed at a higher rate when you make more, it’s just your marginal rate. An increased marginal rate means an increased average rate, so (looking at it in an entirely equivalent way) all of your income does get taxed more, just not as by as much as the marginal increase. Arguing otherwise demonstrates either functional innumeracy or deceitfulness.
  - scarface74 5y ago
    You very much know that many people think that “when you get in a higher tax bracket” that all of your income gets taxed more. You’re just being overly pedantic. That’s also not how any economist thinks of it.
    - puffoflogic 5y ago
      > You very much know that many people think that “when you get in a higher tax bracket” that all of your income gets taxed more. Because it does. Stop being deceitful by pushing the free variable over to one extreme of all the extra tax being allocated to the margin. Literally any other allocation results in the conclusion that some additional tax is taken from the baseline income. This is the natural way to look at it. When I get taxed throughout the year, I don't see my first $X get taxed at Y% and then the next %X' get taxed at %Y'; I see the whole lot get taxed at Z%, Y<Z<Y'. And at the end of the year, I don't see that I have paid Y% or Y'% of my income, I see that I have paid Z% of my income. Marginal tax rate is propaganda with no basis in reality. Average tax rate is the only meaningful number. Marginal tax rate provides a convenient way to define a piecewise progressive tax curve which is continuous by construction, which is a nice property, but it is just a convenience. The function is still increasing everywhere above the negative tax cutoff. Every dollar earned does result in more taxes being paid on the whole income.

scarface74 5y ago

First please don’t get caught up in the misconception that all of your income is taxed at a higher rate when you make more, it’s just your marginal rate. In fact, from $150 to $206K, your marginal tax rate on anything above $160K only goes up 6% I went from $150K at the beginning of 2020 to around $225K working remotely. At $150K we could do anything we wanted (married grown children) to a point six months later we could do everything we wanted. Meaning with $225K, we could: - “retire my wife” at 45 so she could pursue her passions. - max out my 401K (and soon catch up contributions) and max out my “after tax 401K” with 10% of my base - go on multiple decent vacations a year. - fly my wife out with me on business trips (on my dime) and stay over. - “Date nights” once a week or so. - stay in AirBnbs around the country for weeks at a time just for a change of scenery and work from there. We had to balance those things before. Now we can do all of it. If I made more, it would go toward my less conservative investments - real estate, opening a franchise, etc.

brailsafe 5y ago
I don't think they did make that mistake. In Canada at least, if you go from $150k to $225k, you're effectively making $31k more, or about $131k depending on where you live, as an actual employee. Certainly if you make a point of living somewhere incredibly cheap, then that difference will go farther, but the parent here was actually about accurate in saying you'd retain half of the difference. Living in Vancouver or Toronto for example, I'd still not be able to buy a home for quite a long time, and that difference would make a very minimal impact on my lifestyle, if I could hypothetically make that much. It would be preferable to optimize for free time.
- scarface74 5y ago
  All of the difference between when I made $150K to around $225K came from RSUs. The ones I get the first half of the year are taxed at 40% (12.4% FICA, 2.4% Medicare, 22% Federal, 6% state). The second half don’t get taxed for FICA. That made the difference in our lifestyle. Just for clarification, we pay the employer’s side of FICA on RSUs and I am soon moving to a state that doesn’t tax income. But why is there a belief that you work harder to get paid more? It was a lot more work being a senior dev/de facto “cloud architect” at a 60 person company where everyone look to me for guidance (in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king) than it is being a mid level consultant at a 1.6 trillion dollar company.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Definitely not always the case, but quite often you end up needing to take on more responsibility, at least within the same company. The states has different bits that I'm unaware of, but in Canada there's no such thing as not paying income tax, but there are places with lower income tax.
  - ericmay 5y ago
    I see a lot of people say they’re moving to a no-income tax state, but don’t you just make up the difference in fixed taxes like property tax? Maybe California and/or New York are specifically bad in ways I’m not aware of.
    - scarface74 5y ago
      Property taxes are also below average in Florida. A booming tourist industry does wonders.
      - ericmay 5y ago
        Does the federal government subsidize flood insurance in Florida too? Wonder if that rug will ever get pulled.
puffoflogic 5y ago
> First please don’t get caught up in the misconception that all of your income is taxed at a higher rate when you make more, it’s just your marginal rate. An increased marginal rate means an increased average rate, so (looking at it in an entirely equivalent way) all of your income does get taxed more, just not as by as much as the marginal increase. Arguing otherwise demonstrates either functional innumeracy or deceitfulness.
- scarface74 5y ago
  You very much know that many people think that “when you get in a higher tax bracket” that all of your income gets taxed more. You’re just being overly pedantic. That’s also not how any economist thinks of it.
  - puffoflogic 5y ago
    > You very much know that many people think that “when you get in a higher tax bracket” that all of your income gets taxed more. Because it does. Stop being deceitful by pushing the free variable over to one extreme of all the extra tax being allocated to the margin. Literally any other allocation results in the conclusion that some additional tax is taken from the baseline income. This is the natural way to look at it. When I get taxed throughout the year, I don't see my first $X get taxed at Y% and then the next %X' get taxed at %Y'; I see the whole lot get taxed at Z%, Y<Z<Y'. And at the end of the year, I don't see that I have paid Y% or Y'% of my income, I see that I have paid Z% of my income. Marginal tax rate is propaganda with no basis in reality. Average tax rate is the only meaningful number. Marginal tax rate provides a convenient way to define a piecewise progressive tax curve which is continuous by construction, which is a nice property, but it is just a convenience. The function is still increasing everywhere above the negative tax cutoff. Every dollar earned does result in more taxes being paid on the whole income.