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[Edited to remove snark/barbs as per HN guidelines]. I am genuinely curious though - you seem like you've had a successful career and life. I typically assume

[Edited to remove snark/barbs as per HN guidelines]. I am genuinely curious though - you seem like you've had a successful career and life. I typically assume people in your position are rather familiar with the basic math behind personal taxes, 401k's, HSA's, child tax credits, standard deductions vs. large charitable deductions, etc. I think I may have been grossly mischaracterizing a potentially large group of people and would love to hear about how you've handled your taxes since entering the workforce...and what you personally would attribute your misunderstanding of taxes to. I think that would help me better understand and empathize with people who aren't like me.

brodouevencode 2y ago
~Calm down. It's a common misconception.~
- QuercusMax 2y ago
  It's a common misconception among people who haven't done even the slightest bit of research. Or done their taxes themselves. Confidently stating stuff that is obviously false SHOULD be ridiculed.
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html No, they shouldn't.
  - xeromal 2y ago
    Seems strange that ridicule should be your instinct rather than simple education
    - berdario 2y ago
      An educative reply is easier to ignore than a (or multiple) replies in which you're ridiculed. Moreover, being thought about how you're wrong about X might not necessarily translate in the subject being more careful before confidently expressing themselves on a Y topic on which they don't know anything about. Hopefully, ridiculing might make the subject reconsider that part of their character. That said, the HN policies recommend to "be kind"... I have no idea how to "ridicule someone's post in a kind way" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
      - nequo 2y ago
        The pile of downvotes drives the point home. No need to ridicule, education is better. If you can't educate the poster, at least you educate other readers who also didn’t know, without the unnecessary noise of ridicule.
        reaperman 2y ago
        I don’t think I see the same pile of downvotes that you’re seeing? My comment of ridicule got +10 votes in 15 minutes before I edited it, and now is down to +9 an hour after editing the ridicule out. I see that “Calm down. It's a common misconception” did get downvoted.
        nequo 2y ago
        I mean the original comment that misunderstood marginal tax rates. That one looks very gray to me. (And I think your comment is better without the ridicule! The sources you found for your follow-up comment are interesting and I learned from it.)
        brodouevencode 2y ago
        Agreed - and thank you for updating.
    - Maxatar 2y ago
      I hate to agree with the ridicule point, but honestly ridicule also deters other people from making a similar mistake. I agree ridicule should be used cautiously, but in a case like this where someone speaks so confidently and boldly gives advice on a topic they clearly do not understand, I think ridicule is a good way not only to inform them, but also indicate to others that it's not okay to give people this kind of advice unless you have a basic understanding of the topic.
      - xeromal 2y ago
        I have nothing to back this up but the reason I'm sensitive to ridicule as an initial reaction is that I believe it causes people to shy away and there's potential that they surround themselves with other ridiculed people and now you have a group that is intentionally dense and now powerful. Education should always be the first step. I grew up in rural appalachia and the amount of grief than the uneducated get there for being uneducated causes them to become even more hostile and I really think that the Mr Rogers approach of education would eventually neuter any hostility they had towards the educated. * edit: changed education to educated
        Maxatar 2y ago
        That is an excellent and profound point and one I can admire. Thanks for sharing it.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    > Or done their taxes themselves. As someone who does his taxes manually every year, this probably wouldn't help. Most people would be under the threshold and just look up the value in a table and not see how it scales. If you use any sort of tax software I expect it's even further obscured.
- reaperman 2y ago
  Apparently this belief is far more common than I thought. I expected it to be closer to the percentage of Americans who think the Earth is flat (10%)[0]. Evidently 50% of Americans[1] believe you pay your highest marginal rate on all of your income. I'm blown away, and genuinely humbled. I don't understand how someone can get a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac home loan, raise children, have a long and successful career and not understand tax brackets -- I clearly am incredibly out of touch with how some people live their lives, and I have a lot to learn about other people. 0: https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-survey-us-public-beliefs https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-sur... 1: https://www.aei.org/economics/survey-confirms-that-many-americans-misunderstand-income-tax-brackets/ https://www.aei.org/economics/survey-confirms-that-many-amer...
  - brodouevencode 2y ago
    It was preached to me that this was how it worked since I started working in the mid-90s. I didn't learn better until an accountant friend clarified that when I got him to do my taxes when I started making real money in the mid-00s. I dare say that it was probably the most common understanding until fairly recently. The internet has probably helped a lot with that. That is to say, if you're of a certain generation you probably think this way because that's what was generally understood.
    - reaperman 2y ago
      I guess it's a fair assumption you never once attempted to calculate your own taxes in the first decade of filing taxes? Did you just drop some papers off to an accountant the first year that you reached adulthood? I've used an accountant occasionally, but only when I had genuinely confusing tax issues involving international work or work across many states where I wasn't sure whether there existed a "nexus" that required me to pay taxes in State A or State B. Even then I did my best to double-check their work, and often caught errors/omissions. Most of my friends also do their own taxes (and have since 2006), regardless if they were line cooks or painters or engineers or MBB consultants. So I'm just not familiar with the lifestyles that lead to this. I'd actually understand it more for people who've entered the workforce since 2005, because TurboTax/etc became much more popular. I did taxes with my dad in the mid-90's before most homes had internet, and back then it seemed far more likely that people would understand how taxes worked, because there wasn't super-easy software to do it for you.
buildbot 2y ago
Unfortunately, it also could be an intentionally false statement in order to push a specific political viewpoint. For example, flat tax rates without income brackets. I don’t think it’s wrong to correct falsehoods strongly in general.
medvezhenok 2y ago
It's a common misconception because there are plenty of situations where making more money actually decreases your take-home pay. It's just not via the bracket system, it's via other incentives in the tax code (and welfare benefits in certain cases). There are a lot of things (IETC for example, or benefits, or health insurance) which have $ cutoffs. Or tax breaks (i.e. electric vehicle credit) that only apply below a certain income. Exceeding those fixed points can certainly make you make less money. One thing I ran into recently was fiscal incentives for homeownership (though not directly related to taxes) - there is a cutoff at a certain income level where if you stay below it you get a $10K credit towards closing costs. The tax code is full of things like that (or getting your student loans forgiven if you make less than $X for Y years). If you want to see how bad the welfare cliffs are, there are cases where a single mother is better off making $28,000 per year (and receiving all federal benefits), than making ~$70,000 per year (and qualifying for none of them). Image of the welfare cliff effect, example in Pennsylvania: https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7de186ce44f6a868056098e4478db8ab https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7de186ce44f6a86805609...
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
Well, there is a grain of truth to his words. Over certain income, you are no longer qualified for food stamps, medicaid and section 8, so you are better off earning less.
- yieldcrv 2y ago
  this line of discussion is amusingly charitable for a person replying to a conversation about earning $150k - $300k/yr they're not eligible for any welfare and are above the best phaseouts
  - EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
    poor things:)
freetinker 2y ago
It’s an arbitrary human rule, not fundamental knowledge. Quite understandable how someone may not have the interest or knowledge to know this nuance (perhaps to their own detriment). It’s somewhere along the spectrum of the knowledge of arcane laws, for example. The federal tax code perhaps isn’t ’arcane’ by popular consensus in educated circles, but it’s on the spectrum of arbitrary human knowledge that keeps changing and evolving. Would you be shocked if a CPA knows more about this than a theoretical physicist?

brodouevencode 2y ago

~Calm down. It's a common misconception.~

QuercusMax 2y ago
It's a common misconception among people who haven't done even the slightest bit of research. Or done their taxes themselves. Confidently stating stuff that is obviously false SHOULD be ridiculed.
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html No, they shouldn't.
- xeromal 2y ago
  Seems strange that ridicule should be your instinct rather than simple education
  - berdario 2y ago
    An educative reply is easier to ignore than a (or multiple) replies in which you're ridiculed. Moreover, being thought about how you're wrong about X might not necessarily translate in the subject being more careful before confidently expressing themselves on a Y topic on which they don't know anything about. Hopefully, ridiculing might make the subject reconsider that part of their character. That said, the HN policies recommend to "be kind"... I have no idea how to "ridicule someone's post in a kind way" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
    - nequo 2y ago
      The pile of downvotes drives the point home. No need to ridicule, education is better. If you can't educate the poster, at least you educate other readers who also didn’t know, without the unnecessary noise of ridicule.
      - reaperman 2y ago
        I don’t think I see the same pile of downvotes that you’re seeing? My comment of ridicule got +10 votes in 15 minutes before I edited it, and now is down to +9 an hour after editing the ridicule out. I see that “Calm down. It's a common misconception” did get downvoted.
        nequo 2y ago
        I mean the original comment that misunderstood marginal tax rates. That one looks very gray to me. (And I think your comment is better without the ridicule! The sources you found for your follow-up comment are interesting and I learned from it.)
        brodouevencode 2y ago
        Agreed - and thank you for updating.
  - Maxatar 2y ago
    I hate to agree with the ridicule point, but honestly ridicule also deters other people from making a similar mistake. I agree ridicule should be used cautiously, but in a case like this where someone speaks so confidently and boldly gives advice on a topic they clearly do not understand, I think ridicule is a good way not only to inform them, but also indicate to others that it's not okay to give people this kind of advice unless you have a basic understanding of the topic.
    - xeromal 2y ago
      I have nothing to back this up but the reason I'm sensitive to ridicule as an initial reaction is that I believe it causes people to shy away and there's potential that they surround themselves with other ridiculed people and now you have a group that is intentionally dense and now powerful. Education should always be the first step. I grew up in rural appalachia and the amount of grief than the uneducated get there for being uneducated causes them to become even more hostile and I really think that the Mr Rogers approach of education would eventually neuter any hostility they had towards the educated. * edit: changed education to educated
      - Maxatar 2y ago
        That is an excellent and profound point and one I can admire. Thanks for sharing it.
- Izkata 2y ago
  > Or done their taxes themselves. As someone who does his taxes manually every year, this probably wouldn't help. Most people would be under the threshold and just look up the value in a table and not see how it scales. If you use any sort of tax software I expect it's even further obscured.
reaperman 2y ago
Apparently this belief is far more common than I thought. I expected it to be closer to the percentage of Americans who think the Earth is flat (10%)[0]. Evidently 50% of Americans[1] believe you pay your highest marginal rate on all of your income. I'm blown away, and genuinely humbled. I don't understand how someone can get a Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac home loan, raise children, have a long and successful career and not understand tax brackets -- I clearly am incredibly out of touch with how some people live their lives, and I have a lot to learn about other people. 0: https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-survey-us-public-beliefs https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/conspiracy-vs-science-sur... 1: https://www.aei.org/economics/survey-confirms-that-many-americans-misunderstand-income-tax-brackets/ https://www.aei.org/economics/survey-confirms-that-many-amer...
- brodouevencode 2y ago
  It was preached to me that this was how it worked since I started working in the mid-90s. I didn't learn better until an accountant friend clarified that when I got him to do my taxes when I started making real money in the mid-00s. I dare say that it was probably the most common understanding until fairly recently. The internet has probably helped a lot with that. That is to say, if you're of a certain generation you probably think this way because that's what was generally understood.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    I guess it's a fair assumption you never once attempted to calculate your own taxes in the first decade of filing taxes? Did you just drop some papers off to an accountant the first year that you reached adulthood? I've used an accountant occasionally, but only when I had genuinely confusing tax issues involving international work or work across many states where I wasn't sure whether there existed a "nexus" that required me to pay taxes in State A or State B. Even then I did my best to double-check their work, and often caught errors/omissions. Most of my friends also do their own taxes (and have since 2006), regardless if they were line cooks or painters or engineers or MBB consultants. So I'm just not familiar with the lifestyles that lead to this. I'd actually understand it more for people who've entered the workforce since 2005, because TurboTax/etc became much more popular. I did taxes with my dad in the mid-90's before most homes had internet, and back then it seemed far more likely that people would understand how taxes worked, because there wasn't super-easy software to do it for you.

buildbot 2y ago

Unfortunately, it also could be an intentionally false statement in order to push a specific political viewpoint. For example, flat tax rates without income brackets. I don’t think it’s wrong to correct falsehoods strongly in general.

medvezhenok 2y ago

It's a common misconception because there are plenty of situations where making more money actually decreases your take-home pay. It's just not via the bracket system, it's via other incentives in the tax code (and welfare benefits in certain cases). There are a lot of things (IETC for example, or benefits, or health insurance) which have $ cutoffs. Or tax breaks (i.e. electric vehicle credit) that only apply below a certain income. Exceeding those fixed points can certainly make you make less money. One thing I ran into recently was fiscal incentives for homeownership (though not directly related to taxes) - there is a cutoff at a certain income level where if you stay below it you get a $10K credit towards closing costs. The tax code is full of things like that (or getting your student loans forgiven if you make less than $X for Y years). If you want to see how bad the welfare cliffs are, there are cases where a single mother is better off making $28,000 per year (and receiving all federal benefits), than making ~$70,000 per year (and qualifying for none of them). Image of the welfare cliff effect, example in Pennsylvania: https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7de186ce44f6a868056098e4478db8ab https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7de186ce44f6a86805609...

EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago

Well, there is a grain of truth to his words. Over certain income, you are no longer qualified for food stamps, medicaid and section 8, so you are better off earning less.

yieldcrv 2y ago
this line of discussion is amusingly charitable for a person replying to a conversation about earning $150k - $300k/yr they're not eligible for any welfare and are above the best phaseouts
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  poor things:)

freetinker 2y ago

It’s an arbitrary human rule, not fundamental knowledge. Quite understandable how someone may not have the interest or knowledge to know this nuance (perhaps to their own detriment). It’s somewhere along the spectrum of the knowledge of arcane laws, for example. The federal tax code perhaps isn’t ’arcane’ by popular consensus in educated circles, but it’s on the spectrum of arbitrary human knowledge that keeps changing and evolving. Would you be shocked if a CPA knows more about this than a theoretical physicist?