Comments on: 5 Tax Laws You Shouldn’t Have to Worry About

By: Marc

Marc — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 09:09:02 +0000

Joman, I’m not 100% informed about US taxes but I’m pretty sure there are taxes on your “buying power” that you wouldn’t think of straight away. Like import duties, cigarette tax, alcohol tax, stamp duties, govt fees etc. These add up. If you pay for a service then your “buying power” is further eroded by the fact that the guy doing the service pays tax on his income too. Say the job is worth $500 then you add the service persons tax to that. You’re now looking at $625 plus. You had to earn more than $750 before tax to get the money to pay for $500 of services.

I probably could have been a lot clearer but at least I’m not trying say that you only pay 23% of your effort in tax because you pay a lot more than that.

By: Joman

Joman — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 19:49:58 +0000

@Diane, I make a little over 50k a year and live in California and about 23% of my paycheck is deducted as federal and state taxes. That gets pushed up to 40% IF I included my employer’s medical, dental, and 401k plan deductions. I also always get a refund every year after filing so what I am actually paying in taxes is even lower.
The federal income tax rate, according to Wikipedia, for people in the highest income tax bracket is 35% so unless you can name a state with a 25% state tax or you earn A LOT of money by means that includes some of the things mentioned in the article, then I’m pretty sure you are full of it (but it explains why you are a libertarian).

By: Beck

Beck — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:51:29 +0000

@Diane, Do you have a source for that information on the 40%/60% taxes that Canadians and Americans pay? I’m curious to read more about that as those numbers seem quite a bit higher than I expected..

By: Diane

Diane — Thu, 20 Jan 2011 07:52:25 +0000

@blahy: Boy are you naive. We Americans pay a substantial portion of our income out as taxes, I believe much moreso than many supposedly “socialist” countries in Western Europe. Yet we don’t receive nearly the return for our investment in social benefits, nor is our government nearly as efficient. I believe in Canada, they pay 40% of their total income in taxes. In the U.S., it’s 60%. Yet in Canada, you get health insurance, good schools, well maintained roads pretty much everywhere, a better-maintained social net, etc. This is one of the reasons why I’m libertarian; if the U.S. government were as efficient as Canada’s, sure, I’d entrust them with a lot of things. But the U.S. government’s so stupid it’ll pay $200 for a toilet seat and invest tens of millions of dollars for a bridge to an uninhabited island, so why should I trust them with my health insurance?

By: Christian

Christian — Sun, 02 Jan 2011 14:31:21 +0000

@Angelique
That isn’t a serious question, right? I think some of you have lived very sheltered lives.

By: Pip

Pip — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 06:29:12 +0000

My mom and I visited her sister in England last year, and I did notice a lot of older houses with bricked windows. Haha, I always thought that it was some type of fashion of architecture. Thanks for this article!

By: Angelique

Angelique — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 04:27:48 +0000

What country would that be blahy?

By: blahy

blahy — Mon, 02 Aug 2010 02:47:06 +0000

Everyone wants their roads shoveled/paved, their trash picked up, their libraries, their police officers, their schools, and countless other necessities but no one wants to pay for them.

Shush and pay your taxes. And be grateful you live in a country where you don’t have to walk down streets flowing with your neighbors feces.

By: keith

keith — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 14:30:01 +0000

I’ve actually had to pay the jock tax myself! Not only does it apply to athletes, but to anyone appearing on a game show. So when I won $30K on Jeopardy in 2002, imagine my surprise when I got a tax bill from the state of California in addition to my home state. I’ve heard that people who win merchandise actually have to sell it just to pay the tax bill on it.

By: James

James — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 05:32:14 +0000

Re: Website for #4. So that’s what Cindy Lauper is up to these days? Lol.