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Please don't find it insulting when I say I find your numbers hard to believe. A claim of a marginal tax rate of 75% without any solid numbers is hardly doing j

by jayp 18y ago

Please don't find it insulting when I say I find your numbers hard to believe. A claim of a marginal tax rate of 75% without any solid numbers is hardly doing justice your thesis. If you'd give a more detailed breakdown, your case would not seem so dubious.

CWuestefeld 18y ago
Please go back and read more precisely. I didn't say that I had an actual marginal tax rate of 75%, I said "an apparent marginal tax rate of 75%", using that "apparent" qualification quite intentionally. Looking at the picture with an understanding of what's going on, it's clear that there's a degree of apples and oranges here. I don't know what my tax liability would be if I were to take the previous year's data and apply the current tax rules to it, but that's what would show what my actual marginal rate is. What I'm trying to illustrate is that the real-world experience of a taxpayer, under the regime of a byzantine tax code, can (and did, in my case) experience a severe dis-incentive to further productivity. And the farther the tax code moves in a "progressive" direction, the more frequently this will be true. Incentives matter. (Sorry, I'm not going to announce all my financial data on the Internet)
anamax 18y ago
> A claim of a marginal tax rate of 75% without any solid numbers is hardly doing justice your thesis. The top marginal rate is around 40%. SSI is around 15%. CA's top is around 10%. Add in some deduction phaseouts and it's easy to see 70%.
- jayp 18y ago
  Top marginal rate is 35% now. The SSI stops after 105k (or so), so it is immaterial, because the marginal fed tax rate is 28% at that point. True that state income tax is a big one, for some states. So I completely didn't bundle that in my estimate. Phaseout deductions never _increase_ marginal tax rates, so also immaterial. Nevertheless, exceeding 50% marginal tax rate with today's tax rates is unlikely.
  - anamax 18y ago
    > Top marginal rate is 35% now. There's a surtax that puts it at 39+. > The SSI stops after 105k (or so), Today. > Phaseout deductions never _increase_ marginal tax rates, so also immaterial. Phaseouts affect the amount of income taxed and thus affect the amount of taxes due for a given increase in income. Suppose that earning $1k more costs me $300 in deductions due to phaseouts. The result is that my AGI has gone up by $1.3k. Assuming no bracket change, the taxes owed because of that $1k increase is 1.3x the bracket rate. Let's put some numbers on it. Suppose that the tax rate for that bracket is 10%. That's $100 for the $1k and $30 for the $300 for a total of $130 owed. Do you really want to argue that the marginal rate for that $1k is not 13%? I also left out sales taxes. Their effect depends on what the mix of goods purchased (at least some food is tax free in most jurisdictions while gas, tobacco, and booze isn't) and the average tax rate up to that point. For a state like CA, with sales taxes typically over 8% and soon to be 9%, that can add another 3-5% to the marginal tax burden.
    - CWuestefeld 18y ago
      Don't forget the AMT. It's the granddaddy of all phaseouts.

by jayp 18y ago

CWuestefeld 18y ago

Please go back and read more precisely. I didn't say that I had an actual marginal tax rate of 75%, I said "an apparent marginal tax rate of 75%", using that "apparent" qualification quite intentionally. Looking at the picture with an understanding of what's going on, it's clear that there's a degree of apples and oranges here. I don't know what my tax liability would be if I were to take the previous year's data and apply the current tax rules to it, but that's what would show what my actual marginal rate is. What I'm trying to illustrate is that the real-world experience of a taxpayer, under the regime of a byzantine tax code, can (and did, in my case) experience a severe dis-incentive to further productivity. And the farther the tax code moves in a "progressive" direction, the more frequently this will be true. Incentives matter. (Sorry, I'm not going to announce all my financial data on the Internet)

anamax 18y ago

> A claim of a marginal tax rate of 75% without any solid numbers is hardly doing justice your thesis. The top marginal rate is around 40%. SSI is around 15%. CA's top is around 10%. Add in some deduction phaseouts and it's easy to see 70%.

jayp 18y ago
Top marginal rate is 35% now. The SSI stops after 105k (or so), so it is immaterial, because the marginal fed tax rate is 28% at that point. True that state income tax is a big one, for some states. So I completely didn't bundle that in my estimate. Phaseout deductions never _increase_ marginal tax rates, so also immaterial. Nevertheless, exceeding 50% marginal tax rate with today's tax rates is unlikely.
- anamax 18y ago
  > Top marginal rate is 35% now. There's a surtax that puts it at 39+. > The SSI stops after 105k (or so), Today. > Phaseout deductions never _increase_ marginal tax rates, so also immaterial. Phaseouts affect the amount of income taxed and thus affect the amount of taxes due for a given increase in income. Suppose that earning $1k more costs me $300 in deductions due to phaseouts. The result is that my AGI has gone up by $1.3k. Assuming no bracket change, the taxes owed because of that $1k increase is 1.3x the bracket rate. Let's put some numbers on it. Suppose that the tax rate for that bracket is 10%. That's $100 for the $1k and $30 for the $300 for a total of $130 owed. Do you really want to argue that the marginal rate for that $1k is not 13%? I also left out sales taxes. Their effect depends on what the mix of goods purchased (at least some food is tax free in most jurisdictions while gas, tobacco, and booze isn't) and the average tax rate up to that point. For a state like CA, with sales taxes typically over 8% and soon to be 9%, that can add another 3-5% to the marginal tax burden.
  - CWuestefeld 18y ago
    Don't forget the AMT. It's the granddaddy of all phaseouts.