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Tax Season: Why I loathe paying taxes since moving to CA from the UK

53 points by dgildeh 3y ago

mcny 3y ago
I have a bridge to sell you if you believe the wealthy pay anywhere near 43.92%
- dgildeh 3y ago
  If you read the blog I actually explain that. However for middle class tech workers in CA, I can assure you they are
  - mcny 3y ago
    Even if I take you at face value and say you paid an effective tax rate of 43.92% on an income of USD 650k+ (or USD 279.5k+ which I still contend nobody does, unless you do some kind of shady math including all your property taxes and sales taxes and all kinds of nonsense), can you really say with a straight face that people making USD 650k+ a year, year after year are part of the middle class? Who is in the upper class? Just the thousand or so billionaires?
    - __s 3y ago
      I'm confused what you're getting at. First you say 40% income tax isn't a thing for the wealthy then you refute that this person who pays 40% income tax isn't wealthy? Their response was to say that they aren't part of the upper class, who we're saying are those who have enough wealth to protect most of their income from taxation You might as well make yourself clearer & instead of saying the wealthy don't pay 40% taxes, just straight up say "dgildeh, you're a liar, you don't pay that much in taxes, post your tax records to prove yourself"
    - yamtaddle 3y ago
      That's Fussellian upper-middle. Enough to send three kids to $70k/yr private boarding school and from there to an elite university, enough to have a sailing hobby, enough to take annual family ski trips in the Alps. But you're still working for a living, and can't retain a fancy lifestyle if you stop.
      - mcny 3y ago
        > But you're still working for a living, and can't retain a fancy lifestyle if you stop. Personally, I’d say if you are a wage slave like me regardless of how much you earn, we can’t afford to have any children. I can’t say you have not been warned. The signs have been there all along. Remember how much trouble HRC go in for just the title of the book, it takes a village. It is not your responsibility alone to make sure you have happy, healthy children who will become productive members of society later. If you have zero income as soon as you stop working and waste your money on private school for your kids, I say it is in the same category as buying a yacht and a jet ski. Just incredibly dumb things you can’t afford. Can you imagine how much pain you will cause if you need to withdraw your kids from school if you have a stroke? Ffs stop sending kids to private schools! We and our parents are getting older every day. How will we pay for our and our parents’ health care cost? I don’t have the courage to say just pull the plug if something happens to me and my end of life care costs more than USD 200k. Don’t worry about the bigger picture of who will take care of society when we are older. Screw this society. In any case, can you really trust your kids to take care of you when you are old if you don’t have any savings of your own?
    - margorczynski 3y ago
      The upper class doesn't work - it owns. Maybe some top executives of global corporations can be considered upper class, but usually most of their wealth comes from ownership of stock.
    - hellisothers 3y ago
      Instead of worrying about middle vs upper etc consider these things: - that is all income and it really is taxed at the rates described, it is crushing the amount of tax I/we pay as wage earners - CA (where those salaries exist) is really expensive, like $4500/mo for daycare, so despite having a high income it feels no higher than somebody making half as much elsewhere - the truely wealthy derive their cash flow from investments which are taxed at half as much, or own businesses and deduct expenses to effecting 0% So the effect is if you have high income you are inescapably taxed very high (and are ineligible for almost all govt inventories) resulting in an effectively much lower cash flow, meanwhile the wealthy have a lower effective tax burden for the same or higher standard of living.
      - mcny 3y ago
        > like $4500/mo for daycare Ideally, I’d like to see an end to all silly credits, deductions, and exemptions and things like that. It is absurd to me that you would want to not pay taxes on your daycare expenses. I think the proper solution is for the state to offer free of cost (actually free of cost, no hidden charges) daycare for all children. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. We are just overly against supporting all parents. All children, regardless of income or assets, should have access to WIC and ideally we should increase WIC age to eighteen. We should remove income, assets, means testing from all entitlement programs. > the truely wealthy derive their cash flow from investments which are taxed at half as much, or own businesses and deduct expenses to effecting 0% How can we fix this?
    - zamnos 3y ago
      At the risk of revealing which class I find myself in thanks to an unnamed startup, my most recent transaction had: Federal Withholding 37.00% California State Tax 10.23% Medicare 2.25% OASDI 0.50% California VDI 0.07% taken out for taxes, for a total of 50.05%
      - mcny 3y ago
        The problem isn’t that you are paying too much in taxes. Your taxes are fine. The problem is the super wealthy aren’t paying their share of taxes. Don’t get mad at me. Get mad at the top 0.01% and their cronies. Look at how carried interest died again in Congress. Also, we can and should fix the tax system so any state income tax you pay reduces your federal income tax bill. So for example, in your case, the ten percent or so that you pay to California (or the flat four percent in case of Colorado) gets effectively paid back to you by the federal government (even if you choose standard deduction). This would immediately give you a little breathing room. This would also encourage states from artificially keeping their income tax low. Ideally I’d like to see an end to all credits, deductions, and exemptions but I don’t see it happening so this is pretty much the best I can think of… That and either California needs to repeal the idiotic prop 13 from 1978 that from what I understand keeps property taxes artificially low or we need to enact a federal property tax of about 7% (and effectively exempt the equivalent of a national median two bedroom unit per owner/co-owner). That’s a conversation for another day. For now let’s focus on federal income tax. I don’t know how to solve this wealth tax problem. Since you shared your withholding, let me share a metric that everyone in the US can agree on: Divide line 24 by line 1a (not line 9!!!) and multiply it by 100. Forget about all the other things you pay. We paid under 16 percent in 2022 and under 22 percent in 2021. Do not include Medicare. Do not include state taxes. Just do plain simple math with the FIT. (You don’t need to share the final number here. It is just for you.)
dgildeh 3y ago
Probably the last blog I'll write end to end now that ChatGPT is out too.
dotcoma 3y ago
Why did you move to California if you’re working on a B2C app? A B2B play like, say, Zendesk, I can understand, but isn’t anywhere ok for a B2C app?
- dgildeh 3y ago
  I’m actually a B2B founder with 2 exits. This is a passion project I plan to open source when it’s ready
  - dotcoma 3y ago
    I see.
PopAlongKid 3y ago
California may be high tax for high income people, but for most middle and low income folks, it is actually pretty cheap. CA's top marginal income tax rate is actually a temporary provision which may or may not be extended when it expires, depending on who the voters elect. > driving away the 1% of households that pay 50% of the taxes in California, worsening the situation for everyone. One big problem is that over the decades the economy has shifted more to services and less to sales of physical goods, so sales tax revenue has declined disproportionately. We should have a sales tax on services to offset reductions in income tax, which would be much better for creating steady revenue. >this is the only place we’ve lived where it would add an additional $2,000+/month expense to keep our family’s healthcare while unemployed. That's inaccurate. If your income is low, you can get subsidized coverage through Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), up to 100%. >government retirement plans like 401(k)s 401k is not a "government plan", it is an employer-sponsored plan. There is no "retirement age" associated with a 401k or an IRA, for that matter. You are making a pretty big mistake here by not maxing out your available opportunities to defer taxes. The tax you pay when you retire on such contributions is based on where you live at the time, not where you lived when you earned the money. >Lastly, we won’t allow ourselves to be audited without our knowledge by the IRS by using a cloud-based personal finance app that could be subpoenaed behind our backs if they continue pushing for new powers. Paranoid maybe? Audits are a necessary component of our voluntary reporting system, and you have nothing to fear if you pay what you legitimately owe. You will absolutely be notified if you are being audited, and get a chance to provide accurate information. Far more people cheat on their taxes than are unfairly dunned by the IRS.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  Thanks for the comment. I wasn't aware of that point on the high top marginal tax rate, I can only comment that it's been in place for a long time (since I moved here) and I don't get any sense personally that it will be expired when California is constantly looking for ways to increase taxes. Re. healthcare, from past people I've hired and let go and friends who've been unemployed, perhaps as they're all in tech with higher incomes, it seems pretty accurate. I remember one employee had to setup Cobra to continue keeping their healthcare plan, and it was actually more expensive than what the company was paying for some reason! Terrible system in general... Re. 401(k), I understand these are privately managed accounts, but the rules around them are dictated by the government, and can be changed as many countries are doing in general. And there are penalties for withdrawing before 59.5years, which I would call the "retirement age" on these plans. I completely get the math of deferring taxes on your investments, and employer contributions, but I prefer to find other tax strategies that lock in tax savings today and also have more freedom around what we do with our money, these plans are pretty restrictive and I suspect will only get more restrictive in future as I mention in the blog. With regards to my paranoia, I did link to a full blog on Privacy explaining that position, but specifically this attempt which fortunately failed: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-admin-backs-tracking-bank-accounts-600-annual/story?id=80665505 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-admin-backs-tracking-b... I could be wrong, but this is one of many examples I've heard about since moving here, the general theme being they want more powers to get our data and audit us. Since moving here, our experience is the IRS is way more aggressive and invasive with tax filings and penalties than we ever experienced in the UK too. And don't even get me started on the exit tax, which for some reason kicks in after 8 years if you're on a green card, requires you to list every asset you have worldwide, and then pay capital gains on it, if you ever decide to leave the USA one day!
andrewstuart 3y ago
The key thing here is that Americans see all the stuff in the left hand column as “socialism”. The author sees the relationship between the government providing all those services and a healthy functioning society. Americans do not… again, they see provision of community/common good social services as socialism. Americans don’t see a direct line relationship between “socialism” and tent cities of homeless (though it’s true there is also a drug problem there). In short, all the stuff that many other social democracies see as core to functioning society, the Americans…. speaking generally…. don’t want.
- xboxnolifes 3y ago
  And many who may want it, do not believe that giving our government more money or power will wnd up with the desired outcome.
  - Ancalagon 3y ago
    I’m in this boat. Living in California and seeing how far our tax dollars go (or rather don’t) us not inspiring
    - thephyber 3y ago
      The problem isn’t California. It’s lobbying (which is protected by the 1A). California foolishly tries to throw money at the problems without first addressing the reason the sieve is so leaky.
  - thephyber 3y ago
    It’s worth looking at why the UK (and Germany and Japan) were able to provide these services at a reasonable cost while the US can’t. All of those countries rebuilt their social contracts after WW2 ended. The US built the New Deal (which has mostly been dismantled and/or sabotaged since), but we haven’t really changed the social contract or updated most of our welfare / safety net systems for the modern age. People who want those things simply don’t see how they fit into the current US social contract.
- 3y ago
verteu 3y ago
Great idea to compare "what you pay" vs "what you get" between countries. I'd love to see further analysis downstream: How much revenue per capita each country collects, and how it's allocated. (IIRC, the conventional wisdom is that wealthy Americans are good at legally avoiding taxes, and a disproportionate amount of America's tax money goes to an outsized military and a cost-ineffective healthcare system.)
- dgildeh 3y ago
  Thanks, I did actually start work on getting that data but as the blog was already very long, and it would take hours to find and analyse the data, I decided against it. Maybe a future blog!
BigCryo 3y ago
Americans are so dominated psychologically by elite propaganda that they fail to realize that America has this unique tax return torture system designed to extort fees from the people that go to the tax return industrial complex and a portion of that money gets paid back is kickbacks and bribes and fees or whatever to the Congress people that Ensure that the Byzantine tax system never goes away and only gets more complicated every year.. no other Nation on Earth has this tax return torture system and extortion device systematically applied across society
- Ancalagon 3y ago
  Why I’ll never work for intuit
- BigCryo 3y ago
  I see that the tax return industrial complex Shills are downvoting my post
  - annexrichmond 3y ago
    I downvoted you, and I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but it's also tangential to the topic at hand.
    - johnea 3y ago
      Totally on topic. Completely inappropriate downvote...
- jareklupinski 3y ago
  no other nation on earth has tax software that looks like a dating sim, either https://taxheaven3000.com/ https://taxheaven3000.com/ you gotta take the bitter with the sweet
  - dgildeh 3y ago
    Amazing! Turbo Tax Killer!!! :)
petercooper 3y ago
One big difference, though, is in the US I believe you can file jointly if you are married and get roughly double the usual range for each tax bracket? That option isn't available in the UK and must surely make a huge difference with high income households.
- to11mtm 3y ago
  Well, yes and no. Single Income Married families have some benefits, or if one party makes a lot less than the other. However there are other disadvantages in some cases; after my first wife got married to me, her financial aid went into the toilet. Even though I was making less than 50k a year myself (and paying enough in student loans/etc that we were barely making ends meet,) that income counted against her. [0] [0] - Filing separately (as we did once we were separated before our divorce) had it's own disadvanatges; namely that I could no longer declare my student loan interest on my taxes.
  - dgildeh 3y ago
    Thanks both - I actually did put a paragraph about this in the blog then took it out as the blog was too long, there are definitely differences between married vs. single in US/UK, but I wanted to look more at the worst case scenario. Most of my friends/colleagues are not aware that for at least single tax filers, the difference between UK/California is less than 5%, I think its assumed Europe is significantly higher, and that's not the case anymore as the US bureaucracy has grown!
999900000999 3y ago
>We need the basics that deliver true equality, as I experienced growing up in the UK: free healthcare, good public schools, and good public transport. Maybe even ban the private options like they banned To be fair. You picked California. Chicago , NYC, DC and I'm sure one or two other American cities have functioning public transportation. The other two issues will never ever be fixed. Tbh if your quality of life was so much better in the UK why'd give that up ?
- atlasunshrugged 3y ago
  Having lived in SF, London, Berlin, and now DC, I can tell you that DC's is totally subpar in comparison to any I encountered in Europe. Not only in the year that I've been there have there been multiple shootings on the subway in that time but I can't remember a single instance where I didn't see someone hopping the turnstile and the trains are quite slow (in terms of number of trains per hour).
  - dougmwne 3y ago
    Are you saying that DC was worse than SF? I find that hard to believe. SF has worse coverage, fewer trains and felt much more dangerous. I was able to live in DC for 4 years without a car but with a bike and my walking shoes and found it a mostly happy experience. The trains could have been more frequent and some areas of the city had sparse coverage, but it was not so bad. Europe and NYC is a leap better of course. Sounds like I missed a crime wave though. That’s a shame, I remember the metro system being safe and clean during the 2010’s.
    - atlasunshrugged 3y ago
      No, I was saying that it was subpar in DC compared to Europe. SF doesn't even register, it's just pathetic.
  - 999900000999 3y ago
    It's functional, compared to most of the US where public transportation effectively doesn't exist. I agree Europe is a step above, but to be fair European cities tend to be much more compact. Public transportation can't work well when things are spread out
mellosouls 3y ago
I have sympathy with the premise but unfortunately quotes like this completely undermine the reliability of the analysis: World-class public transport, never needed a car in London The idea that UK public transport is world class is absurd. The author is doing extreme cherry picking by referring to the entirely unrepresentative London transport infrastructure and service. Try living in a rural area or many urban areas, especially in the north, and talk about "world class" public transport to people there.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  Do you live in UK or US? I used to live in the country too - and was able to take regular trains in less than an hour from my house to London. Compare here, we have a Caltrain that only runs once an hour during the day, is slow, and to get to city requires switching to the Bart, which is also slow, and so filthy too, its much easier just to drive into the city, avoiding the potholes, and hoping your car doesn't get broken into when you park late downtown... UK has it way better without any cherry picking :)
  - thephyber 3y ago
    You seem to be comparing UK to California. The parent seems to be comparing the UK to the best systems in the world. Also worth pointing out that BART was originally planned to be a large loop around the entire South Bay, but the affluent suburbs in the lower peninsula rejected the plan to expand it to their neighborhoods. Yay American NIMBYs! /s
- nicky0 3y ago
  UK public transport in general may be lacking, especially in towns and rural areas, but London public transport (which the author was referring to) is definitely world class.
  - mellosouls 3y ago
    Agree, but as I said it's not representative of the UK, not remotely, and that's the comparison in the analysis.
tebbers 3y ago
As a Brit this article is laughable. People are literally dying in the UK because so called wonderful 'free' public healthcare doesn't have the ambulances to send to them. Tons of potholes everywhere too. Outside London and major cities, public transport is non-existent to very poor.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  I know us Brits like to complain, but when I drove there last year the roads were all brand new and fantastic compared to what we have over here in California! I did think to add some caveats about the NHS, my sister works there so I'm aware of all the issues there. However, I would rather choose that system, over the one here, which is extremely expensive, and doesn't even look after you if you lose your insurance for whatever reason. I think overall, I would say the UK has a lot of challenges, and if I was still living there, I would actually feel ok to pay more taxes to support those services, because I'd be using them. As opposed to here, where I pay almost the same rate of taxes, and feel like I get nothing in return!
  - giantg2 3y ago
    You both are funny. You haven't seen potholes until you've driven in PA.
- robopsychology 3y ago
  They moved strokes to a 'Category 2' condition that requires an ambulance to arrive in 45 minutes. Having a father who had a stroke early in his life, this sickens me. My trust in the NHS is minimal and seeing how good the healthcare is in California I will be going private when I return. It is night and day, and my private insurance is less than my NI contributions were in the UK. If I message my doctor on my healthcares mobile application I could get an appointment within 2 hours. If I want a blood test I can go to the local office at Stanford and get one within 30 minutes, with my results sent to the healthcare app by the time I get home. It's just so so much better, the NHS really has failed when I look at it from here.
  - 3y ago
pjc50 3y ago
> Lastly, we won’t allow ourselves to be audited without our knowledge by the IRS by using a cloud-based personal finance app that could be subpoenaed behind our backs if they continue pushing for new powers. https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2020/08/can-hmrc-check-personal-bank-accounts/ https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2020/08/... : under some circumstances HMRC can access your banking information without telling you.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  Wow, didn't know that - but I guess it supports my point, that all Western governments are moving in the same direction!
  - pjc50 3y ago
    Driven to a great extent by the US (they made Switzerland, the last bastion of secret Nazi gold, hand over information on bank accounts of US nationals). But no government is going to tolerate large amounts of money disappearing beyond the visibility of taxation. And if you like public services, they have to be paid for like this.
bikeformind 3y ago
The fact we do not receive a simple pie chart from the government that shows exactly where every penny we pay in taxes goes is a criminal travesty.
- callahad 3y ago
  The UK's tax authority actually does send out individualized letters to taxpayers with a pie chart showing how much you paid in and where it was allocated. It was a pleasant surprise after immigrating from America.
- ericpauley 3y ago
  https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
- antognini 3y ago
  If you take a look at the instructions for your 1040 there is a pie chart at the very end which shows where your taxes go. Take a look at page 108: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf
- thephyber 3y ago
  https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer Use the 15 seconds of your life you spent complaining about a non-existent problem to find out if your priors are correct. California doesn’t make it easy to learn about the overview of government expenses, but the USA does.
seanalltogether 3y ago
Since moving to the UK I've wanted to do a breakdown of taxes I paid in Colorado vs UK. Even though taxes are higher here and VAT is 20% I'm still convinced I have more income at the end of the year then I would in CO. Some things I've noticed - I surrendered a good chunk of my paycheck to health insurance in the states that's already folded into income tax in UK Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only needs to cover damage to the car instead of hospital bills Council tax (property tax) is significantly cheaper here. For instance, a £1,000,000 home in manchester might pay £2200-£2700 per year in council tax, while a $1,000,000 home in my old neighborhood in Denver is paying $6000 per year Gasoline is more expensive here, but driving distances are not as high so I think that washes out even Fruit, vegetables and meat is definitely cheaper here then anywhere in CO Internet, cable, and phone plans are significantly cheaper here
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  This is a bit cheating, as CO is significantly more expensive than other roughly equal areas. Something about the altitude magically makes everything more expensive. My mother's car insurance tripled moving to CO, despite the car being paid off and no accidents on record.
  - dgildeh 3y ago
    I wasn't expecting CO to come up more expensive, thanks for sharing!
- pjc50 3y ago
  > Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only needs to cover damage to the car instead of hospital bills UK car insurance includes medical cover! It's just not usually called on quite so much and it's cheaper if it is. At one point there was a lot of fraudulent whiplash claims. Maybe the US has a medical expenses insurance fraud problem? > Council tax (property tax) is significantly cheaper here. Council tax is a really bizarre system that is only loosely linked to property, and the UK would benefit from introducing proper US style property taxation. > Fruit, vegetables and meat is definitely cheaper here then anywhere in CO One of those things that we UKans don't appreciate - food is both cheap and pretty good compared to lots of Europe and especially the much praised Scandinavia. Whereas the US is the land of cheap and plentiful processed food. > Internet, cable, and phone plans are significantly cheaper here The UK has a working if slightly artificial market here, where the US basically doesn't have competition.
evilotto 3y ago
The author makes several really good points about how so much of our taxes that are levied and paid in good faith go towards enriching already-rich entities (healthcare, universities, the defense industry). It's disappointing that the take-away is "join me in having a better way to avoid paying your taxes."
tyoma 3y ago
The tax table only focuses on income tax, but the UK derives a substantial portion of its national budget from VAT, which the US lacks (yes, I know about sales tax — not the same in rates or effect). This does not consider costs. Example: US spends more per person on Medicare and Medicaid than the UK spends per person on NHS. Medicare and Medicaid are not exactly known for lavish spending. Many expensive services are labor intensive and labor costs more. Other costs are driven by political factors — which are not caused by corporate interest but are instead wildly popular with voters (example: NIMBY-ism, Prop 13). Even the dreaded tax filing business exists because there is a substantial political base that hates taxes — and having an awful and infuriating UI/UX to the tax system makes people hate taxes more. The fact that you have to fill out all those forms is a feature, not a bug.
giantg2 3y ago
"it’s become extremely obvious to me that this propaganda doesn’t address the actual problem, which is how the money is actually spent," I think everyone will have a difference opinion on what is worth spend on. There's a part about $100k student debt. Doesn't CA have some sort of reduced/free public college?
tyoma 3y ago
Also there is no law preventing publicly funded ambulances. The reason they do not exist in some places is because voters (and this is local voters, as police/fire funding is very local) have chosen not to raise taxes to pay for it. This is an understandable decision because running an ambulance service is expensive and cities/counties would rather have someone else pay for at least a part of it. Here is a nice explanation from the City of Long Beach: https://www.longbeach.gov/finance/services-and-permits/ambulance-services/ https://www.longbeach.gov/finance/services-and-permits/ambul...
ozozozd 3y ago
CA taxes get you the privilege to say you're progressive, and that you're not like that other guy. For everything else, use your Mastercard. We've been spending some time in Turkey since the pandemic and despite all the corruption, we experienced clean streets (swept daily, hardly rocket science), rebuilt roads, rebuilt sidewalks, new bike lanes, maintained gardens/parks, improved broadband, virtually no homelessness. They even tried cleaning the temporary sea snot problem, which seemed a bit like trying to boil the ocean. But A for effort, I thought. I love CA but also quite heart broken that in over a decade, I've watched San Francisco get more and more expensive, with taxes also going up, and homelessness get more and more prevalent, only to find out that in 2019 they were not letting homeless people with drug issues or dogs in shelters, and complaining about how homeless people "don't wanna go to the shelters." Well, have the operators not seen a single homeless person? I bet having a dog and drug issues is the greatest predictor of homelessness. So the homeless shelter is basically a shelter that doesn't allow any homeless in.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  > CA taxes get you the privilege to say you're progressive, and that you're not like that other guy. For everything else, use your Mastercard. :)
johnea 3y ago
I agreed with the overwhelming majority of this article. However one serious ommision is the fact that NO ONE who makes $650,000/yr pays $295,000 in income taxes in the US. That byzantine tax structure is basically in place to insure this. Personally, I'm a lefty, and I will be the first in line to say that the government of California is massively corrupt. Government is a monopoly, and as such it needs major public review and restrictions in place to prevent corruption. We don't have those review processes, and we don't have those restrictions. A message to the author: If you think you're getting a bad deal for your taxes in California, try out a red state for size, where you get basically nothing for your tax dollars.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  I'm not sure I agree with that statement just looking at our own tax bills... Also, my point was I feel that I get nothing for my taxes in California already! I will give California public libraries which I rediscovered recently after Covid, that's probably the only service I appreciate with my tax dollars currently!
- nicky0 3y ago
  > NO ONE who makes $650,000/yr pays $295,000 in income taxes in the US. What are you suggesting they actually pay?
dave333 3y ago
One way to improve government services is to measure quality somehow like private corporations do. Then there is at least a number that can be optimized instead of just more or less spending. Subjectively as an expat Brit living in California I would say Medicare as provided by Kaiser Permanente is superior to my memories of the 1970s UK NHS.
yieldcrv 3y ago
Its pretty easy to mitigate taxes in California works for other states too but the tax rates won’t be high enough for you to bother looking If your plan is just earning a salary and saving then you’ll get taxed the highest, the government is literally telling you to do anything else. Risk is rewarded, transactional velocity within the economy is healthier for the economy than tax revenues and the government promotes this via the tax code.
Al_Ptr 3y ago
> We don’t need ... standing Army ... And now we are at the point when one strong and courageous nation defending free world from neoHitler with sweat, tears and blood, while countries without adequate armies are trying to find weapons needed.

53 points by dgildeh 3y ago

mcny 3y ago

I have a bridge to sell you if you believe the wealthy pay anywhere near 43.92%

dgildeh 3y ago
If you read the blog I actually explain that. However for middle class tech workers in CA, I can assure you they are
- mcny 3y ago
  Even if I take you at face value and say you paid an effective tax rate of 43.92% on an income of USD 650k+ (or USD 279.5k+ which I still contend nobody does, unless you do some kind of shady math including all your property taxes and sales taxes and all kinds of nonsense), can you really say with a straight face that people making USD 650k+ a year, year after year are part of the middle class? Who is in the upper class? Just the thousand or so billionaires?
  - __s 3y ago
    I'm confused what you're getting at. First you say 40% income tax isn't a thing for the wealthy then you refute that this person who pays 40% income tax isn't wealthy? Their response was to say that they aren't part of the upper class, who we're saying are those who have enough wealth to protect most of their income from taxation You might as well make yourself clearer & instead of saying the wealthy don't pay 40% taxes, just straight up say "dgildeh, you're a liar, you don't pay that much in taxes, post your tax records to prove yourself"
  - yamtaddle 3y ago
    That's Fussellian upper-middle. Enough to send three kids to $70k/yr private boarding school and from there to an elite university, enough to have a sailing hobby, enough to take annual family ski trips in the Alps. But you're still working for a living, and can't retain a fancy lifestyle if you stop.
    - mcny 3y ago
      > But you're still working for a living, and can't retain a fancy lifestyle if you stop. Personally, I’d say if you are a wage slave like me regardless of how much you earn, we can’t afford to have any children. I can’t say you have not been warned. The signs have been there all along. Remember how much trouble HRC go in for just the title of the book, it takes a village. It is not your responsibility alone to make sure you have happy, healthy children who will become productive members of society later. If you have zero income as soon as you stop working and waste your money on private school for your kids, I say it is in the same category as buying a yacht and a jet ski. Just incredibly dumb things you can’t afford. Can you imagine how much pain you will cause if you need to withdraw your kids from school if you have a stroke? Ffs stop sending kids to private schools! We and our parents are getting older every day. How will we pay for our and our parents’ health care cost? I don’t have the courage to say just pull the plug if something happens to me and my end of life care costs more than USD 200k. Don’t worry about the bigger picture of who will take care of society when we are older. Screw this society. In any case, can you really trust your kids to take care of you when you are old if you don’t have any savings of your own?
  - margorczynski 3y ago
    The upper class doesn't work - it owns. Maybe some top executives of global corporations can be considered upper class, but usually most of their wealth comes from ownership of stock.
  - hellisothers 3y ago
    Instead of worrying about middle vs upper etc consider these things: - that is all income and it really is taxed at the rates described, it is crushing the amount of tax I/we pay as wage earners - CA (where those salaries exist) is really expensive, like $4500/mo for daycare, so despite having a high income it feels no higher than somebody making half as much elsewhere - the truely wealthy derive their cash flow from investments which are taxed at half as much, or own businesses and deduct expenses to effecting 0% So the effect is if you have high income you are inescapably taxed very high (and are ineligible for almost all govt inventories) resulting in an effectively much lower cash flow, meanwhile the wealthy have a lower effective tax burden for the same or higher standard of living.
    - mcny 3y ago
      > like $4500/mo for daycare Ideally, I’d like to see an end to all silly credits, deductions, and exemptions and things like that. It is absurd to me that you would want to not pay taxes on your daycare expenses. I think the proper solution is for the state to offer free of cost (actually free of cost, no hidden charges) daycare for all children. This is just the tip of the iceberg though. We are just overly against supporting all parents. All children, regardless of income or assets, should have access to WIC and ideally we should increase WIC age to eighteen. We should remove income, assets, means testing from all entitlement programs. > the truely wealthy derive their cash flow from investments which are taxed at half as much, or own businesses and deduct expenses to effecting 0% How can we fix this?
  - zamnos 3y ago
    At the risk of revealing which class I find myself in thanks to an unnamed startup, my most recent transaction had: Federal Withholding 37.00% California State Tax 10.23% Medicare 2.25% OASDI 0.50% California VDI 0.07% taken out for taxes, for a total of 50.05%
    - mcny 3y ago
      The problem isn’t that you are paying too much in taxes. Your taxes are fine. The problem is the super wealthy aren’t paying their share of taxes. Don’t get mad at me. Get mad at the top 0.01% and their cronies. Look at how carried interest died again in Congress. Also, we can and should fix the tax system so any state income tax you pay reduces your federal income tax bill. So for example, in your case, the ten percent or so that you pay to California (or the flat four percent in case of Colorado) gets effectively paid back to you by the federal government (even if you choose standard deduction). This would immediately give you a little breathing room. This would also encourage states from artificially keeping their income tax low. Ideally I’d like to see an end to all credits, deductions, and exemptions but I don’t see it happening so this is pretty much the best I can think of… That and either California needs to repeal the idiotic prop 13 from 1978 that from what I understand keeps property taxes artificially low or we need to enact a federal property tax of about 7% (and effectively exempt the equivalent of a national median two bedroom unit per owner/co-owner). That’s a conversation for another day. For now let’s focus on federal income tax. I don’t know how to solve this wealth tax problem. Since you shared your withholding, let me share a metric that everyone in the US can agree on: Divide line 24 by line 1a (not line 9!!!) and multiply it by 100. Forget about all the other things you pay. We paid under 16 percent in 2022 and under 22 percent in 2021. Do not include Medicare. Do not include state taxes. Just do plain simple math with the FIT. (You don’t need to share the final number here. It is just for you.)

dgildeh 3y ago

Probably the last blog I'll write end to end now that ChatGPT is out too.

dotcoma 3y ago

Why did you move to California if you’re working on a B2C app? A B2B play like, say, Zendesk, I can understand, but isn’t anywhere ok for a B2C app?

dgildeh 3y ago
I’m actually a B2B founder with 2 exits. This is a passion project I plan to open source when it’s ready
- dotcoma 3y ago
  I see.

PopAlongKid 3y ago

California may be high tax for high income people, but for most middle and low income folks, it is actually pretty cheap. CA's top marginal income tax rate is actually a temporary provision which may or may not be extended when it expires, depending on who the voters elect. > driving away the 1% of households that pay 50% of the taxes in California, worsening the situation for everyone. One big problem is that over the decades the economy has shifted more to services and less to sales of physical goods, so sales tax revenue has declined disproportionately. We should have a sales tax on services to offset reductions in income tax, which would be much better for creating steady revenue. >this is the only place we’ve lived where it would add an additional $2,000+/month expense to keep our family’s healthcare while unemployed. That's inaccurate. If your income is low, you can get subsidized coverage through Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), up to 100%. >government retirement plans like 401(k)s 401k is not a "government plan", it is an employer-sponsored plan. There is no "retirement age" associated with a 401k or an IRA, for that matter. You are making a pretty big mistake here by not maxing out your available opportunities to defer taxes. The tax you pay when you retire on such contributions is based on where you live at the time, not where you lived when you earned the money. >Lastly, we won’t allow ourselves to be audited without our knowledge by the IRS by using a cloud-based personal finance app that could be subpoenaed behind our backs if they continue pushing for new powers. Paranoid maybe? Audits are a necessary component of our voluntary reporting system, and you have nothing to fear if you pay what you legitimately owe. You will absolutely be notified if you are being audited, and get a chance to provide accurate information. Far more people cheat on their taxes than are unfairly dunned by the IRS.

dgildeh 3y ago
Thanks for the comment. I wasn't aware of that point on the high top marginal tax rate, I can only comment that it's been in place for a long time (since I moved here) and I don't get any sense personally that it will be expired when California is constantly looking for ways to increase taxes. Re. healthcare, from past people I've hired and let go and friends who've been unemployed, perhaps as they're all in tech with higher incomes, it seems pretty accurate. I remember one employee had to setup Cobra to continue keeping their healthcare plan, and it was actually more expensive than what the company was paying for some reason! Terrible system in general... Re. 401(k), I understand these are privately managed accounts, but the rules around them are dictated by the government, and can be changed as many countries are doing in general. And there are penalties for withdrawing before 59.5years, which I would call the "retirement age" on these plans. I completely get the math of deferring taxes on your investments, and employer contributions, but I prefer to find other tax strategies that lock in tax savings today and also have more freedom around what we do with our money, these plans are pretty restrictive and I suspect will only get more restrictive in future as I mention in the blog. With regards to my paranoia, I did link to a full blog on Privacy explaining that position, but specifically this attempt which fortunately failed: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-admin-backs-tracking-bank-accounts-600-annual/story?id=80665505 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-admin-backs-tracking-b... I could be wrong, but this is one of many examples I've heard about since moving here, the general theme being they want more powers to get our data and audit us. Since moving here, our experience is the IRS is way more aggressive and invasive with tax filings and penalties than we ever experienced in the UK too. And don't even get me started on the exit tax, which for some reason kicks in after 8 years if you're on a green card, requires you to list every asset you have worldwide, and then pay capital gains on it, if you ever decide to leave the USA one day!

andrewstuart 3y ago

The key thing here is that Americans see all the stuff in the left hand column as “socialism”. The author sees the relationship between the government providing all those services and a healthy functioning society. Americans do not… again, they see provision of community/common good social services as socialism. Americans don’t see a direct line relationship between “socialism” and tent cities of homeless (though it’s true there is also a drug problem there). In short, all the stuff that many other social democracies see as core to functioning society, the Americans…. speaking generally…. don’t want.

xboxnolifes 3y ago
And many who may want it, do not believe that giving our government more money or power will wnd up with the desired outcome.
- Ancalagon 3y ago
  I’m in this boat. Living in California and seeing how far our tax dollars go (or rather don’t) us not inspiring
  - thephyber 3y ago
    The problem isn’t California. It’s lobbying (which is protected by the 1A). California foolishly tries to throw money at the problems without first addressing the reason the sieve is so leaky.
- thephyber 3y ago
  It’s worth looking at why the UK (and Germany and Japan) were able to provide these services at a reasonable cost while the US can’t. All of those countries rebuilt their social contracts after WW2 ended. The US built the New Deal (which has mostly been dismantled and/or sabotaged since), but we haven’t really changed the social contract or updated most of our welfare / safety net systems for the modern age. People who want those things simply don’t see how they fit into the current US social contract.
3y ago

verteu 3y ago

Great idea to compare "what you pay" vs "what you get" between countries. I'd love to see further analysis downstream: How much revenue per capita each country collects, and how it's allocated. (IIRC, the conventional wisdom is that wealthy Americans are good at legally avoiding taxes, and a disproportionate amount of America's tax money goes to an outsized military and a cost-ineffective healthcare system.)

dgildeh 3y ago
Thanks, I did actually start work on getting that data but as the blog was already very long, and it would take hours to find and analyse the data, I decided against it. Maybe a future blog!

BigCryo 3y ago

Americans are so dominated psychologically by elite propaganda that they fail to realize that America has this unique tax return torture system designed to extort fees from the people that go to the tax return industrial complex and a portion of that money gets paid back is kickbacks and bribes and fees or whatever to the Congress people that Ensure that the Byzantine tax system never goes away and only gets more complicated every year.. no other Nation on Earth has this tax return torture system and extortion device systematically applied across society

Ancalagon 3y ago
Why I’ll never work for intuit
BigCryo 3y ago
I see that the tax return industrial complex Shills are downvoting my post
- annexrichmond 3y ago
  I downvoted you, and I don't necessarily disagree with your premise, but it's also tangential to the topic at hand.
  - johnea 3y ago
    Totally on topic. Completely inappropriate downvote...
jareklupinski 3y ago
no other nation on earth has tax software that looks like a dating sim, either https://taxheaven3000.com/ https://taxheaven3000.com/ you gotta take the bitter with the sweet
- dgildeh 3y ago
  Amazing! Turbo Tax Killer!!! :)

petercooper 3y ago

One big difference, though, is in the US I believe you can file jointly if you are married and get roughly double the usual range for each tax bracket? That option isn't available in the UK and must surely make a huge difference with high income households.

to11mtm 3y ago
Well, yes and no. Single Income Married families have some benefits, or if one party makes a lot less than the other. However there are other disadvantages in some cases; after my first wife got married to me, her financial aid went into the toilet. Even though I was making less than 50k a year myself (and paying enough in student loans/etc that we were barely making ends meet,) that income counted against her. [0] [0] - Filing separately (as we did once we were separated before our divorce) had it's own disadvanatges; namely that I could no longer declare my student loan interest on my taxes.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  Thanks both - I actually did put a paragraph about this in the blog then took it out as the blog was too long, there are definitely differences between married vs. single in US/UK, but I wanted to look more at the worst case scenario. Most of my friends/colleagues are not aware that for at least single tax filers, the difference between UK/California is less than 5%, I think its assumed Europe is significantly higher, and that's not the case anymore as the US bureaucracy has grown!

999900000999 3y ago

>We need the basics that deliver true equality, as I experienced growing up in the UK: free healthcare, good public schools, and good public transport. Maybe even ban the private options like they banned To be fair. You picked California. Chicago , NYC, DC and I'm sure one or two other American cities have functioning public transportation. The other two issues will never ever be fixed. Tbh if your quality of life was so much better in the UK why'd give that up ?

atlasunshrugged 3y ago
Having lived in SF, London, Berlin, and now DC, I can tell you that DC's is totally subpar in comparison to any I encountered in Europe. Not only in the year that I've been there have there been multiple shootings on the subway in that time but I can't remember a single instance where I didn't see someone hopping the turnstile and the trains are quite slow (in terms of number of trains per hour).
- dougmwne 3y ago
  Are you saying that DC was worse than SF? I find that hard to believe. SF has worse coverage, fewer trains and felt much more dangerous. I was able to live in DC for 4 years without a car but with a bike and my walking shoes and found it a mostly happy experience. The trains could have been more frequent and some areas of the city had sparse coverage, but it was not so bad. Europe and NYC is a leap better of course. Sounds like I missed a crime wave though. That’s a shame, I remember the metro system being safe and clean during the 2010’s.
  - atlasunshrugged 3y ago
    No, I was saying that it was subpar in DC compared to Europe. SF doesn't even register, it's just pathetic.
- 999900000999 3y ago
  It's functional, compared to most of the US where public transportation effectively doesn't exist. I agree Europe is a step above, but to be fair European cities tend to be much more compact. Public transportation can't work well when things are spread out

mellosouls 3y ago

I have sympathy with the premise but unfortunately quotes like this completely undermine the reliability of the analysis: World-class public transport, never needed a car in London The idea that UK public transport is world class is absurd. The author is doing extreme cherry picking by referring to the entirely unrepresentative London transport infrastructure and service. Try living in a rural area or many urban areas, especially in the north, and talk about "world class" public transport to people there.

dgildeh 3y ago
Do you live in UK or US? I used to live in the country too - and was able to take regular trains in less than an hour from my house to London. Compare here, we have a Caltrain that only runs once an hour during the day, is slow, and to get to city requires switching to the Bart, which is also slow, and so filthy too, its much easier just to drive into the city, avoiding the potholes, and hoping your car doesn't get broken into when you park late downtown... UK has it way better without any cherry picking :)
- thephyber 3y ago
  You seem to be comparing UK to California. The parent seems to be comparing the UK to the best systems in the world. Also worth pointing out that BART was originally planned to be a large loop around the entire South Bay, but the affluent suburbs in the lower peninsula rejected the plan to expand it to their neighborhoods. Yay American NIMBYs! /s
nicky0 3y ago
UK public transport in general may be lacking, especially in towns and rural areas, but London public transport (which the author was referring to) is definitely world class.
- mellosouls 3y ago
  Agree, but as I said it's not representative of the UK, not remotely, and that's the comparison in the analysis.

tebbers 3y ago

As a Brit this article is laughable. People are literally dying in the UK because so called wonderful 'free' public healthcare doesn't have the ambulances to send to them. Tons of potholes everywhere too. Outside London and major cities, public transport is non-existent to very poor.

dgildeh 3y ago
I know us Brits like to complain, but when I drove there last year the roads were all brand new and fantastic compared to what we have over here in California! I did think to add some caveats about the NHS, my sister works there so I'm aware of all the issues there. However, I would rather choose that system, over the one here, which is extremely expensive, and doesn't even look after you if you lose your insurance for whatever reason. I think overall, I would say the UK has a lot of challenges, and if I was still living there, I would actually feel ok to pay more taxes to support those services, because I'd be using them. As opposed to here, where I pay almost the same rate of taxes, and feel like I get nothing in return!
- giantg2 3y ago
  You both are funny. You haven't seen potholes until you've driven in PA.
robopsychology 3y ago
They moved strokes to a 'Category 2' condition that requires an ambulance to arrive in 45 minutes. Having a father who had a stroke early in his life, this sickens me. My trust in the NHS is minimal and seeing how good the healthcare is in California I will be going private when I return. It is night and day, and my private insurance is less than my NI contributions were in the UK. If I message my doctor on my healthcares mobile application I could get an appointment within 2 hours. If I want a blood test I can go to the local office at Stanford and get one within 30 minutes, with my results sent to the healthcare app by the time I get home. It's just so so much better, the NHS really has failed when I look at it from here.
- 3y ago

pjc50 3y ago

> Lastly, we won’t allow ourselves to be audited without our knowledge by the IRS by using a cloud-based personal finance app that could be subpoenaed behind our backs if they continue pushing for new powers. https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2020/08/can-hmrc-check-personal-bank-accounts/ https://www.simplybusiness.co.uk/knowledge/articles/2020/08/... : under some circumstances HMRC can access your banking information without telling you.

dgildeh 3y ago
Wow, didn't know that - but I guess it supports my point, that all Western governments are moving in the same direction!
- pjc50 3y ago
  Driven to a great extent by the US (they made Switzerland, the last bastion of secret Nazi gold, hand over information on bank accounts of US nationals). But no government is going to tolerate large amounts of money disappearing beyond the visibility of taxation. And if you like public services, they have to be paid for like this.

bikeformind 3y ago

The fact we do not receive a simple pie chart from the government that shows exactly where every penny we pay in taxes goes is a criminal travesty.

callahad 3y ago
The UK's tax authority actually does send out individualized letters to taxpayers with a pie chart showing how much you paid in and where it was allocated. It was a pleasant surprise after immigrating from America.
ericpauley 3y ago
https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
antognini 3y ago
If you take a look at the instructions for your 1040 there is a pie chart at the very end which shows where your taxes go. Take a look at page 108: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040gi.pdf
thephyber 3y ago
https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer Use the 15 seconds of your life you spent complaining about a non-existent problem to find out if your priors are correct. California doesn’t make it easy to learn about the overview of government expenses, but the USA does.

seanalltogether 3y ago

Since moving to the UK I've wanted to do a breakdown of taxes I paid in Colorado vs UK. Even though taxes are higher here and VAT is 20% I'm still convinced I have more income at the end of the year then I would in CO. Some things I've noticed - I surrendered a good chunk of my paycheck to health insurance in the states that's already folded into income tax in UK Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only needs to cover damage to the car instead of hospital bills Council tax (property tax) is significantly cheaper here. For instance, a £1,000,000 home in manchester might pay £2200-£2700 per year in council tax, while a $1,000,000 home in my old neighborhood in Denver is paying $6000 per year Gasoline is more expensive here, but driving distances are not as high so I think that washes out even Fruit, vegetables and meat is definitely cheaper here then anywhere in CO Internet, cable, and phone plans are significantly cheaper here

mrguyorama 3y ago
This is a bit cheating, as CO is significantly more expensive than other roughly equal areas. Something about the altitude magically makes everything more expensive. My mother's car insurance tripled moving to CO, despite the car being paid off and no accidents on record.
- dgildeh 3y ago
  I wasn't expecting CO to come up more expensive, thanks for sharing!
pjc50 3y ago
> Car insurance in UK is much cheaper because it only needs to cover damage to the car instead of hospital bills UK car insurance includes medical cover! It's just not usually called on quite so much and it's cheaper if it is. At one point there was a lot of fraudulent whiplash claims. Maybe the US has a medical expenses insurance fraud problem? > Council tax (property tax) is significantly cheaper here. Council tax is a really bizarre system that is only loosely linked to property, and the UK would benefit from introducing proper US style property taxation. > Fruit, vegetables and meat is definitely cheaper here then anywhere in CO One of those things that we UKans don't appreciate - food is both cheap and pretty good compared to lots of Europe and especially the much praised Scandinavia. Whereas the US is the land of cheap and plentiful processed food. > Internet, cable, and phone plans are significantly cheaper here The UK has a working if slightly artificial market here, where the US basically doesn't have competition.

evilotto 3y ago

The author makes several really good points about how so much of our taxes that are levied and paid in good faith go towards enriching already-rich entities (healthcare, universities, the defense industry). It's disappointing that the take-away is "join me in having a better way to avoid paying your taxes."

tyoma 3y ago

The tax table only focuses on income tax, but the UK derives a substantial portion of its national budget from VAT, which the US lacks (yes, I know about sales tax — not the same in rates or effect). This does not consider costs. Example: US spends more per person on Medicare and Medicaid than the UK spends per person on NHS. Medicare and Medicaid are not exactly known for lavish spending. Many expensive services are labor intensive and labor costs more. Other costs are driven by political factors — which are not caused by corporate interest but are instead wildly popular with voters (example: NIMBY-ism, Prop 13). Even the dreaded tax filing business exists because there is a substantial political base that hates taxes — and having an awful and infuriating UI/UX to the tax system makes people hate taxes more. The fact that you have to fill out all those forms is a feature, not a bug.

giantg2 3y ago

"it’s become extremely obvious to me that this propaganda doesn’t address the actual problem, which is how the money is actually spent," I think everyone will have a difference opinion on what is worth spend on. There's a part about $100k student debt. Doesn't CA have some sort of reduced/free public college?

tyoma 3y ago

Also there is no law preventing publicly funded ambulances. The reason they do not exist in some places is because voters (and this is local voters, as police/fire funding is very local) have chosen not to raise taxes to pay for it. This is an understandable decision because running an ambulance service is expensive and cities/counties would rather have someone else pay for at least a part of it. Here is a nice explanation from the City of Long Beach: https://www.longbeach.gov/finance/services-and-permits/ambulance-services/ https://www.longbeach.gov/finance/services-and-permits/ambul...

ozozozd 3y ago

CA taxes get you the privilege to say you're progressive, and that you're not like that other guy. For everything else, use your Mastercard. We've been spending some time in Turkey since the pandemic and despite all the corruption, we experienced clean streets (swept daily, hardly rocket science), rebuilt roads, rebuilt sidewalks, new bike lanes, maintained gardens/parks, improved broadband, virtually no homelessness. They even tried cleaning the temporary sea snot problem, which seemed a bit like trying to boil the ocean. But A for effort, I thought. I love CA but also quite heart broken that in over a decade, I've watched San Francisco get more and more expensive, with taxes also going up, and homelessness get more and more prevalent, only to find out that in 2019 they were not letting homeless people with drug issues or dogs in shelters, and complaining about how homeless people "don't wanna go to the shelters." Well, have the operators not seen a single homeless person? I bet having a dog and drug issues is the greatest predictor of homelessness. So the homeless shelter is basically a shelter that doesn't allow any homeless in.

dgildeh 3y ago
> CA taxes get you the privilege to say you're progressive, and that you're not like that other guy. For everything else, use your Mastercard. :)

johnea 3y ago

I agreed with the overwhelming majority of this article. However one serious ommision is the fact that NO ONE who makes $650,000/yr pays $295,000 in income taxes in the US. That byzantine tax structure is basically in place to insure this. Personally, I'm a lefty, and I will be the first in line to say that the government of California is massively corrupt. Government is a monopoly, and as such it needs major public review and restrictions in place to prevent corruption. We don't have those review processes, and we don't have those restrictions. A message to the author: If you think you're getting a bad deal for your taxes in California, try out a red state for size, where you get basically nothing for your tax dollars.

dgildeh 3y ago
I'm not sure I agree with that statement just looking at our own tax bills... Also, my point was I feel that I get nothing for my taxes in California already! I will give California public libraries which I rediscovered recently after Covid, that's probably the only service I appreciate with my tax dollars currently!
nicky0 3y ago
> NO ONE who makes $650,000/yr pays $295,000 in income taxes in the US. What are you suggesting they actually pay?

dave333 3y ago

One way to improve government services is to measure quality somehow like private corporations do. Then there is at least a number that can be optimized instead of just more or less spending. Subjectively as an expat Brit living in California I would say Medicare as provided by Kaiser Permanente is superior to my memories of the 1970s UK NHS.

yieldcrv 3y ago

Its pretty easy to mitigate taxes in California works for other states too but the tax rates won’t be high enough for you to bother looking If your plan is just earning a salary and saving then you’ll get taxed the highest, the government is literally telling you to do anything else. Risk is rewarded, transactional velocity within the economy is healthier for the economy than tax revenues and the government promotes this via the tax code.

Al_Ptr 3y ago

> We don’t need ... standing Army ... And now we are at the point when one strong and courageous nation defending free world from neoHitler with sweat, tears and blood, while countries without adequate armies are trying to find weapons needed.