4 ms·

depends on where you live - 16y ago, my pretax $60k/y was just over $3k/mo take home ... between state & fed, I was paying >35% in income and payroll taxes :\

pcthrowaway 3y ago
16 years ago, a larger portion of 60K would have been in higher brackets. Still, I don't see how you'd pay 40% in taxes.. did you perhaps get some of that back after filing your taxes? I don't think there's a single state where you can pay 40% (or even 30%) of a 60K salary in taxes. Maybe at 120K
- warrenm 3y ago
  I was also single - which puts you in higher brackets than married :) but ... ~8% in FICA (SS & Medicare), >6% in state, and then ~20% in Fed income taxes (15% on the amount from ~8k-~30k, 25% to where I was salarywise) - comes out to right about 35% total As for what I got back ... it was not much - maybe a couple hundred $$ from the state and feds combined $35% is a good rule-of-thumb to cover several states - you may be lower, you may be higher ...but it is a good starting place to back-of-the-envelope think Today, the Fed income tax rate on $60k is a little over 14% (single filer) - https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-... Plus FICA @ 7.65% gets you to ~22% Worst case state for $60k looks to be in the neighborhood of ~9% (NYS @ ~5% + NYC @ ~3.6%) Which, in this case, does happen to get you to ~30-31% instead of 35% (and is all based on single and/or married filing separately, and nothing special you get to deduct) All of which goes to say ... 35% is a reasonable approximation (do 30% if you want as a mildly-more-optimistic approximation) of take-home vs gross pay And, of course, you can adjust this to your local state's rules easily enough - drop the personal income tax entirely in TN, for example But FICA never goes away (SS drops after ~$160k, but Medicare's ~1.5% never does) Neither does Fed income taxes Of course, if you are married filing jointly, your standard deduction will cut your effective rate quite a bit. Add-on dependent children, and it goes even lower. And every individual can figure this all out for themselves - but ballparking in the neighborhood of 1/3 of your income going to income and payroll taxes is not a bad place to start :)
  - pcthrowaway 3y ago
    Wow, thanks for that. I didn't realize there was a mandatory FICA payment (and that it was so large) on top of state and federal taxes. I lived in the U.S >10 years ago, but honestly never filed my taxes myself, and probably just had it come out of my paychecks also

pcthrowaway 3y ago

16 years ago, a larger portion of 60K would have been in higher brackets. Still, I don't see how you'd pay 40% in taxes.. did you perhaps get some of that back after filing your taxes? I don't think there's a single state where you can pay 40% (or even 30%) of a 60K salary in taxes. Maybe at 120K

warrenm 3y ago
I was also single - which puts you in higher brackets than married :) but ... ~8% in FICA (SS & Medicare), >6% in state, and then ~20% in Fed income taxes (15% on the amount from ~8k-~30k, 25% to where I was salarywise) - comes out to right about 35% total As for what I got back ... it was not much - maybe a couple hundred $$ from the state and feds combined $35% is a good rule-of-thumb to cover several states - you may be lower, you may be higher ...but it is a good starting place to back-of-the-envelope think Today, the Fed income tax rate on $60k is a little over 14% (single filer) - https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-brackets https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/taxes/federal-income-tax-... Plus FICA @ 7.65% gets you to ~22% Worst case state for $60k looks to be in the neighborhood of ~9% (NYS @ ~5% + NYC @ ~3.6%) Which, in this case, does happen to get you to ~30-31% instead of 35% (and is all based on single and/or married filing separately, and nothing special you get to deduct) All of which goes to say ... 35% is a reasonable approximation (do 30% if you want as a mildly-more-optimistic approximation) of take-home vs gross pay And, of course, you can adjust this to your local state's rules easily enough - drop the personal income tax entirely in TN, for example But FICA never goes away (SS drops after ~$160k, but Medicare's ~1.5% never does) Neither does Fed income taxes Of course, if you are married filing jointly, your standard deduction will cut your effective rate quite a bit. Add-on dependent children, and it goes even lower. And every individual can figure this all out for themselves - but ballparking in the neighborhood of 1/3 of your income going to income and payroll taxes is not a bad place to start :)
- pcthrowaway 3y ago
  Wow, thanks for that. I didn't realize there was a mandatory FICA payment (and that it was so large) on top of state and federal taxes. I lived in the U.S >10 years ago, but honestly never filed my taxes myself, and probably just had it come out of my paychecks also