7 ms·

How Much Will Your Taxes Jump?

32 points by krohling 14y ago

frendiversity 14y ago
Most single moms I know make at LEAST 7 figures, come on. What do you think these poor people are, some kind of slave class?
- Scorponok 14y ago
  Can you imagine trying to raise 2 children on less than $260k? Thanks Obama :(
omellet 14y ago
Only if you think they're trying to keep in touch with the average person.
usaphp 14y ago
Why does that married couple with 4 kids look so sad while making 650K/year!
zalzane 14y ago
this has to be the stupidest graphic i have ever seen not only does it assign unrealistic income values, it uses different income brackets AND different deduction possibilities for each scenario. I walk away from this graph with absolutely no knowledge.
- grecy 14y ago
  > I walk away from this graph with absolutely no knowledge. This graph is showing there are people out there earning a lot more than you and I, so we need to put our noses to the grindstone, stat! No more talking about extended vacations, citizen.
- r00fus 14y ago
  Makes sense - the WSJ is the newspaper of choice for the average 1%er (or those who have delusions of such wealth).
ck2 14y ago
People making $260k a year are making $5,000 per week Somehow I am just not worried about them. There are tens of millions living on one tenth of that in this country and even millions living on one 1/20th
grecy 14y ago
Look at those poor, sad retirees struggling to make ends meet on only $180,000/yr, with no change to their taxes. Four children on $650,000, what a horrible life those kids are going to have - those parents look so stressed and tired. That single person on $230,000 looks pissed off they'll have to contribute a whole $2,900 extra. How horrible for her.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  The combined income of my apt doesn't even make $180,000/yr and we live in one of the top 5 richest counties in the US! It's not about perspective. Those number aren't relative. They're rich by any measure, especially if you're retired and don't have mortage/loan obligations.
  - apaprocki 14y ago
    The 2006 median family income (MFI) in NYC was $76,800. The data I'm looking at considers the "middle class" 120%-250% of MFI, which is ~$92k-192k.
    - Retric 14y ago
      That's a vary unusual view of the middle class as by definition of Median and your bands more than half of all households below the middle class. It's true that the original definitions of middle class was not peasant and not aristocracy but the US does not have peasants or aristocracy so the definitions changed with the times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class
      - apaprocki 14y ago
        I'm referring to the bands from this: http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map Extremely Low Income: $0 - $23,050 Very Low Income: $23,050 - $38,400 Low Income: $38,400 - $61,450 Moderate Income: $61,450 - $92,150 Middle Income: $92,150 - $192,000 High Income: >= $192,000 There is no one classification to rule them all -- I'd just like to point out that comparing "American" anything to NYC specifically is a waste of time. To anyone that lives in NYC and perhaps a few other cities in the country, you'd know generalized statistics for the country are way off the real world situation found in the city.
leothekim 14y ago
Just what about those income levels is representative of the rest of the country? It is not telling me anything.
dmm 14y ago
The median household income in the US is something like $45K/year. The people in these examples are paying more than that in taxes every year, except for the retired couple struggling along on $180K.
freehunter 14y ago
I don't like that the headline has changed. Sure, it may have been editorialized, but if the editorialized headline was inappropriate, the whole submission should have been removed. Without the original headline, this post makes no sense. If you're confused, the original headline was along the lines of "WSJ - Out of Touch?". The implication was that with the WSJ saying their idea of a retired person makes $180,000, their single parent of two makes $260,000, etc, the WSJ is out of touch with the common person's actual salary, especially during a recession.
- tstegart 14y ago
  We should add for those still wondering that the point of the post was really about the graphic that accompanies the article. You can find it by clicking on the cartoon to the left of the article (for the people whose browsers don't open the graphic automatically).
- tthomas48 14y ago
  Especially during a recession? 95% of Americans are never going to make that money ever. The state of the economy is irrelevant.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    Well especially during a recession there are some Americans who could be making this much, or even used to make this much, but are un- or under-employed. Some may have retired with that much, but the falling stock market decimated their retirement. It wasn't meant to read much into >_>
tortilla 14y ago
When did the Onion buy the WSJ?
- wutbrodo 14y ago
  You're almost right... NewsCorp (i.e. Rupert Murdoch) bought them in 2007.
rayiner 14y ago
And this is pretty much why I have switched from the WSJ to Bloomberg Business Week. It's Wall Street news for people who can't help but laugh at info-graphics with single moms earning $260k standing with their sad looking young children. Also: I'm trying to figure out what's interactive about this "interactive graphic." Also: It's amusing to play "guess the profession." Mine: the single mom and the single women are lawyers--senior associates but not partners. The single mom is divorced. In the family of six, the dad is an MD at a bank, but in one of the less cash-cow divisions. The wife is a college educated stay at home mom. The retired couple: the man is a retired NYPD deputy chief, and the woman is a retired teacher. The single woman lives in Manhattan, the single mom lives in a gentrified part of Brooklyn, the retired couple has a nice place in one of the gentrified parts of Harlem, and the family of four lives in Greenwich and the dad commutes down every morning.
- apaprocki 14y ago
  A real "interactive graphic" for exploring NYC data: http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map
- Zimahl 14y ago
  Hah, I felt exactly the same way. How ever will the parents with 4 kids making $650k per year ever be able to survive without that $21k taken in taxes? Will they not be able to remodel that master bath at their 2nd beach home in Nantucket for another month? Will they have to slum it in the penthouse of the 4-star hotel in Cancun for Thanksgiving this year?
  - dguaraglia 14y ago
    God forbid, the mom might actually have to skip one luxury D&G bag this year! OH THE HUMANITY! But seriously, though, $260k single mom? What alternate universe do the editors live in?
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- MordinSolus 14y ago
JohnGB 14y ago
That is one most biased examples of reporting I have seen. Blatantly trying to manipulate peoples perceptions by leaving out the cases that will apply to the vast majority of people. I'm really disappointed that the WSJ would lower themselves to that.
patmcguire 14y ago
Apparently they all found out the one weird trick for making money online.
ComputerGuru 14y ago
I'm a little surprised at the comments here on HN. I expected a much less sarcastic and "chip on the shoulder" attitude. No one is saying that rich people can't afford to pay more taxes. It's not a question of they're going to starve and be out on the streets. The real issue is, approaching 50% taxes (EDIT: state + federal + medicare/medicaid + social security) is in conflict with the American concept of capitalism. The fact of the matter is, there is nothing proportionate about how much you benefit to how much you pay. The more you make, the more you pay to Uncle Sam both as a proportion of your income and as an actual number. It is not a question of how much can you "afford to give" while remaining well off - I think it's a much more core issue at hand: is someone who makes (to bring this closer to home) $250k as a single individual, perhaps doing freelance software development and consulting, culpable to the tune of $80k out of their salary to help everyone else out? Yes, it's a moral question. It's a philosophical question. And it's also a legal question: even if they are morally obligated - is it the government's job to enforce that? Many people I know in that bracket actually give that much or more in very directed donations to non-profit entities (meaning they're no longer in that bracket thanks to tax deductions) because they feel they a) distrust the government to wisely spend their money to solve the problems, b) they should have a say in where their money goes, and c) it is not the government's job to take and redistribute wealth. As for those that don't make such donations - can you absolutely say they must? Also remember, these tax hikes are really not targeted at the so-called "filthy rich" that have been the focus of all the ire and angst in recent years by groups such as "Occupy Wall Street" - they just affect the upper middle class. Capital gains taxes are ridiculously lower than income taxes. Your wall street bankers and trust fund babies don't have "income" in the traditional sense. You're not taking this money from people that have invested money and are making more money explicitly not doing anything, these taxes are on the upper class of working citizens. The biggest targets are small business owners, startups, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others of their kind. Can you say for an absolute fact that they owe ~40% of their annual income to the government? I can tell you for a fact that the difference between a freelancer in high demand earning $250k/year vs $100k/year is a matter of the hours you work. If you kill yourself to work around the clock to make more money.... you are rewarded with higher taxes. It's not a different class of people that are being taxed higher - it's just people that have worked harder for longer and are, as a result, more well off. This is literally the anti-thesis of core American values: work harder and be, quite frankly, punished for it. (I'm not saying everyone can automatically make $250k/year by working harder and that if you don't make that much then you are lazy - I'm saying the difference between $50k/year and $350k/year is a matter is a matter of quantity, not type; whereas the difference between $250k/year and $200MM/year is a different beast.) At the end of the day, people need to decide if you are paying for services provided by the government or if we are asking the upper middle class to subsidize the rest of the country. There's nothing inherently better or worse about one or the other - it's a matter of philosophy. At the end of the day, are our core principles capitalistic or socialistic? There's something to be said for both, and I'm not saying it's wrong to have socialistic taxes such as those that were just recently repealed in France - but if that's the case, we need to own up and admit that is what we want. It is an exercise in futility to ask to levy taxes on the middle class and above to subsidize the cost of a welfare nation while pretending that is not the case. If that's what you want to do, fine. Nothing in the constitution (despite what your favorite talk show might say) says a thing (explicitly) about capitalism vs socialism one way or the other. It's a democracy and we're free to choose our own path. But let's not do one thing while pretending to be another.
tzs 14y ago
Wow. I knew I was below the Wall Street Journal's target audience, but I didn't realize how far below, assuming those four examples are meant to by typical WJS readers.
towski 14y ago
How can you be mad. They are showing you the numbers right there on the page. It's not like they're lying. How can they be out of touch if they know the numbers?
aresant 14y ago
There is no incentive to pay higher taxes as an individual. Country prosperity and supporting social services are nice concepts but ask any CPA how the average high earner feels about being "business partners" with the govt. So an honest suggestion - what if there were some small incentives created in govt controlled systems for high earners? Pay the highest tax rate? Free carpool lane access for the next year. Nothing insane, but some direct positive benefit in a transaction that overwhelmingly feels negative.
hudibras 14y ago
And don't forget to multiply each of the "investment income" numbers by 25 for a rough calculation of their wealth, assuming a 4% return on investment. For example, that family of six with $180,000 of passive investment income has net worth of $4.5 million. They could move almost everywhere in the U.S. except Manhattan and San Francisco and never work another day in their lives.
DavidBradbury 14y ago
I like how the 'poorest' person in the infographic makes $25k per year in investment income. Assuming an average rate of 8% in returns from an low-risk and diversified portfolio, that person has roughly $312,000 in investments. Man they have it hard.

32 points by krohling 14y ago

Most single moms I know make at LEAST 7 figures, come on. What do you think these poor people are, some kind of slave class?

Scorponok 14y ago
Can you imagine trying to raise 2 children on less than $260k? Thanks Obama :(

omellet 14y ago

Only if you think they're trying to keep in touch with the average person.

usaphp 14y ago

Why does that married couple with 4 kids look so sad while making 650K/year!

zalzane 14y ago

this has to be the stupidest graphic i have ever seen not only does it assign unrealistic income values, it uses different income brackets AND different deduction possibilities for each scenario. I walk away from this graph with absolutely no knowledge.

grecy 14y ago
> I walk away from this graph with absolutely no knowledge. This graph is showing there are people out there earning a lot more than you and I, so we need to put our noses to the grindstone, stat! No more talking about extended vacations, citizen.
r00fus 14y ago
Makes sense - the WSJ is the newspaper of choice for the average 1%er (or those who have delusions of such wealth).

ck2 14y ago

People making $260k a year are making $5,000 per week Somehow I am just not worried about them. There are tens of millions living on one tenth of that in this country and even millions living on one 1/20th

grecy 14y ago

Look at those poor, sad retirees struggling to make ends meet on only $180,000/yr, with no change to their taxes. Four children on $650,000, what a horrible life those kids are going to have - those parents look so stressed and tired. That single person on $230,000 looks pissed off they'll have to contribute a whole $2,900 extra. How horrible for her.

jinushaun 14y ago
The combined income of my apt doesn't even make $180,000/yr and we live in one of the top 5 richest counties in the US! It's not about perspective. Those number aren't relative. They're rich by any measure, especially if you're retired and don't have mortage/loan obligations.
- apaprocki 14y ago
  The 2006 median family income (MFI) in NYC was $76,800. The data I'm looking at considers the "middle class" 120%-250% of MFI, which is ~$92k-192k.
  - Retric 14y ago
    That's a vary unusual view of the middle class as by definition of Median and your bands more than half of all households below the middle class. It's true that the original definitions of middle class was not peasant and not aristocracy but the US does not have peasants or aristocracy so the definitions changed with the times. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_middle_class
    - apaprocki 14y ago
      I'm referring to the bands from this: http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map Extremely Low Income: $0 - $23,050 Very Low Income: $23,050 - $38,400 Low Income: $38,400 - $61,450 Moderate Income: $61,450 - $92,150 Middle Income: $92,150 - $192,000 High Income: >= $192,000 There is no one classification to rule them all -- I'd just like to point out that comparing "American" anything to NYC specifically is a waste of time. To anyone that lives in NYC and perhaps a few other cities in the country, you'd know generalized statistics for the country are way off the real world situation found in the city.

leothekim 14y ago

Just what about those income levels is representative of the rest of the country? It is not telling me anything.

dmm 14y ago

The median household income in the US is something like $45K/year. The people in these examples are paying more than that in taxes every year, except for the retired couple struggling along on $180K.

freehunter 14y ago

I don't like that the headline has changed. Sure, it may have been editorialized, but if the editorialized headline was inappropriate, the whole submission should have been removed. Without the original headline, this post makes no sense. If you're confused, the original headline was along the lines of "WSJ - Out of Touch?". The implication was that with the WSJ saying their idea of a retired person makes $180,000, their single parent of two makes $260,000, etc, the WSJ is out of touch with the common person's actual salary, especially during a recession.

tstegart 14y ago
We should add for those still wondering that the point of the post was really about the graphic that accompanies the article. You can find it by clicking on the cartoon to the left of the article (for the people whose browsers don't open the graphic automatically).
tthomas48 14y ago
Especially during a recession? 95% of Americans are never going to make that money ever. The state of the economy is irrelevant.
- freehunter 14y ago
  Well especially during a recession there are some Americans who could be making this much, or even used to make this much, but are un- or under-employed. Some may have retired with that much, but the falling stock market decimated their retirement. It wasn't meant to read much into >_>

tortilla 14y ago

When did the Onion buy the WSJ?

wutbrodo 14y ago
You're almost right... NewsCorp (i.e. Rupert Murdoch) bought them in 2007.

rayiner 14y ago

And this is pretty much why I have switched from the WSJ to Bloomberg Business Week. It's Wall Street news for people who can't help but laugh at info-graphics with single moms earning $260k standing with their sad looking young children. Also: I'm trying to figure out what's interactive about this "interactive graphic." Also: It's amusing to play "guess the profession." Mine: the single mom and the single women are lawyers--senior associates but not partners. The single mom is divorced. In the family of six, the dad is an MD at a bank, but in one of the less cash-cow divisions. The wife is a college educated stay at home mom. The retired couple: the man is a retired NYPD deputy chief, and the woman is a retired teacher. The single woman lives in Manhattan, the single mom lives in a gentrified part of Brooklyn, the retired couple has a nice place in one of the gentrified parts of Harlem, and the family of four lives in Greenwich and the dad commutes down every morning.

apaprocki 14y ago
A real "interactive graphic" for exploring NYC data: http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map http://envisioningdevelopment.net/map
Zimahl 14y ago
Hah, I felt exactly the same way. How ever will the parents with 4 kids making $650k per year ever be able to survive without that $21k taken in taxes? Will they not be able to remodel that master bath at their 2nd beach home in Nantucket for another month? Will they have to slum it in the penthouse of the 4-star hotel in Cancun for Thanksgiving this year?
- dguaraglia 14y ago
  God forbid, the mom might actually have to skip one luxury D&G bag this year! OH THE HUMANITY! But seriously, though, $260k single mom? What alternate universe do the editors live in?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
MordinSolus 14y ago

JohnGB 14y ago

That is one most biased examples of reporting I have seen. Blatantly trying to manipulate peoples perceptions by leaving out the cases that will apply to the vast majority of people. I'm really disappointed that the WSJ would lower themselves to that.

patmcguire 14y ago

Apparently they all found out the one weird trick for making money online.

ComputerGuru 14y ago

I'm a little surprised at the comments here on HN. I expected a much less sarcastic and "chip on the shoulder" attitude. No one is saying that rich people can't afford to pay more taxes. It's not a question of they're going to starve and be out on the streets. The real issue is, approaching 50% taxes (EDIT: state + federal + medicare/medicaid + social security) is in conflict with the American concept of capitalism. The fact of the matter is, there is nothing proportionate about how much you benefit to how much you pay. The more you make, the more you pay to Uncle Sam both as a proportion of your income and as an actual number. It is not a question of how much can you "afford to give" while remaining well off - I think it's a much more core issue at hand: is someone who makes (to bring this closer to home) $250k as a single individual, perhaps doing freelance software development and consulting, culpable to the tune of $80k out of their salary to help everyone else out? Yes, it's a moral question. It's a philosophical question. And it's also a legal question: even if they are morally obligated - is it the government's job to enforce that? Many people I know in that bracket actually give that much or more in very directed donations to non-profit entities (meaning they're no longer in that bracket thanks to tax deductions) because they feel they a) distrust the government to wisely spend their money to solve the problems, b) they should have a say in where their money goes, and c) it is not the government's job to take and redistribute wealth. As for those that don't make such donations - can you absolutely say they must? Also remember, these tax hikes are really not targeted at the so-called "filthy rich" that have been the focus of all the ire and angst in recent years by groups such as "Occupy Wall Street" - they just affect the upper middle class. Capital gains taxes are ridiculously lower than income taxes. Your wall street bankers and trust fund babies don't have "income" in the traditional sense. You're not taking this money from people that have invested money and are making more money explicitly not doing anything, these taxes are on the upper class of working citizens. The biggest targets are small business owners, startups, lawyers, doctors, engineers, and others of their kind. Can you say for an absolute fact that they owe ~40% of their annual income to the government? I can tell you for a fact that the difference between a freelancer in high demand earning $250k/year vs $100k/year is a matter of the hours you work. If you kill yourself to work around the clock to make more money.... you are rewarded with higher taxes. It's not a different class of people that are being taxed higher - it's just people that have worked harder for longer and are, as a result, more well off. This is literally the anti-thesis of core American values: work harder and be, quite frankly, punished for it. (I'm not saying everyone can automatically make $250k/year by working harder and that if you don't make that much then you are lazy - I'm saying the difference between $50k/year and $350k/year is a matter is a matter of quantity, not type; whereas the difference between $250k/year and $200MM/year is a different beast.) At the end of the day, people need to decide if you are paying for services provided by the government or if we are asking the upper middle class to subsidize the rest of the country. There's nothing inherently better or worse about one or the other - it's a matter of philosophy. At the end of the day, are our core principles capitalistic or socialistic? There's something to be said for both, and I'm not saying it's wrong to have socialistic taxes such as those that were just recently repealed in France - but if that's the case, we need to own up and admit that is what we want. It is an exercise in futility to ask to levy taxes on the middle class and above to subsidize the cost of a welfare nation while pretending that is not the case. If that's what you want to do, fine. Nothing in the constitution (despite what your favorite talk show might say) says a thing (explicitly) about capitalism vs socialism one way or the other. It's a democracy and we're free to choose our own path. But let's not do one thing while pretending to be another.

tzs 14y ago

Wow. I knew I was below the Wall Street Journal's target audience, but I didn't realize how far below, assuming those four examples are meant to by typical WJS readers.

towski 14y ago

How can you be mad. They are showing you the numbers right there on the page. It's not like they're lying. How can they be out of touch if they know the numbers?

aresant 14y ago

There is no incentive to pay higher taxes as an individual. Country prosperity and supporting social services are nice concepts but ask any CPA how the average high earner feels about being "business partners" with the govt. So an honest suggestion - what if there were some small incentives created in govt controlled systems for high earners? Pay the highest tax rate? Free carpool lane access for the next year. Nothing insane, but some direct positive benefit in a transaction that overwhelmingly feels negative.

hudibras 14y ago

And don't forget to multiply each of the "investment income" numbers by 25 for a rough calculation of their wealth, assuming a 4% return on investment. For example, that family of six with $180,000 of passive investment income has net worth of $4.5 million. They could move almost everywhere in the U.S. except Manhattan and San Francisco and never work another day in their lives.

DavidBradbury 14y ago

I like how the 'poorest' person in the infographic makes $25k per year in investment income. Assuming an average rate of 8% in returns from an low-risk and diversified portfolio, that person has roughly $312,000 in investments. Man they have it hard.