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I love this. Top Pages right now: Where's My Refund? - It's Quick, Easy and Secure. 4,600 "You take ~40% of my money every year. And you took too much this y

by malchow 12y ago

I love this. Top Pages right now: Where's My Refund? - It's Quick, Easy and Secure. 4,600 "You take ~40% of my money every year. And you took too much this year. Give me a little back, please?" National Weather Service 1,858 "What's the weather gonna be?" National Weather Service - Forecasts by Region 1,846 "Will it rain today?" Internal Revenue Service 1,672 "Let me spend a few hundred hours figuring out how to pay you for the weather." NOAA - National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration 1,155 "What is the weather today, though, seriously?" myUSCIS - Case Status 1,053 "Please let me in so that I can work in your private sector." The United States Social Security Administration 921 "Where's my check this month?"

ceejayoz 12y ago
What on earth are you doing that you pay a 40% effective tax rate and spend a few hundred hours doing your tax return?
- adventured 12y ago
  Medium volume day trading (hundreds or thousands of transactions per day), where you make $500k per year (which will get you to the 40% marginal tax rate, 31% effective). Have to account for the basis of every trade, all short-term gains/losses, and let's assume they're doing that accounting work themselves (the hundreds of hours is a stretch though), and that they're not plugging a csv file into a program to take care of it for them so it's all manual gain/loss matching. That's about as close as I could come without getting silly. Even oil companies like Exxon don't end up paying 40% (35% effective I think in their last fiscal year). If you make $5+ million per year, and have nothing to offset any of that, you can end up paying over 40%. Pretty rare group of people likely to fall into that.
  - mortehu 12y ago
    Add the ~8% spent by the employer for Medicare and Social Security, and the 31% effective rate becomes ~39%, doesn't it? For income above $200K, there's also an "Additional Medicare Tax" of 0.9%.
    - minikites 12y ago
      I always hear this comical assumption that the employee would automatically receive the matching Social Security and Medicare tax amounts if they were repealed but do you honestly believe that to be true and it wouldn't just go towards padding margins or buying more office supplies? Employers by definition want to pay employees as little as possible, only enough so they stay.
      - mortehu 12y ago
        I think you may have failed to think of freelancers, who are often employed by their own company. Secondly, the specific effects of repealing a tax doesn't make it any less real.
- malchow 12y ago
  I was casually lumping in state income tax. That, the Obamacare 3.8% investment surtax, &c., and the situation is reasonably painful for a whole lot of people.
  - minikites 12y ago
    Taxes are around the lowest they've ever been.
Amezarak 12y ago
> "You take ~40% of my money every year. And you took too much this year. Give me a little back, please?" In my experience, most people are trying to get the biggest refund possible, rather than minimizing the amount they under/overpay.
aros 12y ago
40% effective tax rate? Impressive, I've never gone above 15% and I'm in a 6 digit salary. Hundreds of hours to prepare a tax return? I guess if you can't read or something. No idea how it takes longer than a 2-3 hours (less if you're filing a 1040EZ). And I'm pretty sure that the government is responsible for more than predicting the weather.
hellgas00 12y ago
What's the point of this comment, all you're doing is trivializing how people use government websites/programs. Also there is absolutely no way your effective tax rate is near 40% unless you're in the 99th+ percentile of earners, a little melodramatic, no?

by malchow 12y ago

ceejayoz 12y ago

What on earth are you doing that you pay a 40% effective tax rate and spend a few hundred hours doing your tax return?

adventured 12y ago
Medium volume day trading (hundreds or thousands of transactions per day), where you make $500k per year (which will get you to the 40% marginal tax rate, 31% effective). Have to account for the basis of every trade, all short-term gains/losses, and let's assume they're doing that accounting work themselves (the hundreds of hours is a stretch though), and that they're not plugging a csv file into a program to take care of it for them so it's all manual gain/loss matching. That's about as close as I could come without getting silly. Even oil companies like Exxon don't end up paying 40% (35% effective I think in their last fiscal year). If you make $5+ million per year, and have nothing to offset any of that, you can end up paying over 40%. Pretty rare group of people likely to fall into that.
- mortehu 12y ago
  Add the ~8% spent by the employer for Medicare and Social Security, and the 31% effective rate becomes ~39%, doesn't it? For income above $200K, there's also an "Additional Medicare Tax" of 0.9%.
  - minikites 12y ago
    I always hear this comical assumption that the employee would automatically receive the matching Social Security and Medicare tax amounts if they were repealed but do you honestly believe that to be true and it wouldn't just go towards padding margins or buying more office supplies? Employers by definition want to pay employees as little as possible, only enough so they stay.
    - mortehu 12y ago
      I think you may have failed to think of freelancers, who are often employed by their own company. Secondly, the specific effects of repealing a tax doesn't make it any less real.
malchow 12y ago
I was casually lumping in state income tax. That, the Obamacare 3.8% investment surtax, &c., and the situation is reasonably painful for a whole lot of people.
- minikites 12y ago
  Taxes are around the lowest they've ever been.

Amezarak 12y ago

> "You take ~40% of my money every year. And you took too much this year. Give me a little back, please?" In my experience, most people are trying to get the biggest refund possible, rather than minimizing the amount they under/overpay.

aros 12y ago

40% effective tax rate? Impressive, I've never gone above 15% and I'm in a 6 digit salary. Hundreds of hours to prepare a tax return? I guess if you can't read or something. No idea how it takes longer than a 2-3 hours (less if you're filing a 1040EZ). And I'm pretty sure that the government is responsible for more than predicting the weather.

hellgas00 12y ago

What's the point of this comment, all you're doing is trivializing how people use government websites/programs. Also there is absolutely no way your effective tax rate is near 40% unless you're in the 99th+ percentile of earners, a little melodramatic, no?