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As a SINK I sort of agree with the OP.....or at least I can see his/her point. .....in the principle of people who have the same amount of income should pay the same amount in taxes....
BUT the reality is tax law isn't set up that way. The gov't wants to subsidize some behaviors and not others.
So if we don't like it the only recourse is to lobby to get it changed.
Just like we homeowners get a write off that renters don't get.
Heck that mortgage interest deduction is one of the main reasons I bought a house.
(Am I willing to have kids to get THAT deduction?...uh no!)
I note that some lawmakers have talked about getting rid of the mortgage deduction...have they also talked about eliminating child credits? I dont' follow that because I don't have kids....but I doubt it. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
I don't think it's fair to tell someone they don't have any right to complain because they make a high salary and can afford to pay more than someone else. I don't have any problem with my tax money going to help someone who is truly disabled and can't work, or someone who IS working and needs some additional help. But too many people get away with doing absolutely nothing while everyone else foots the bill. I have a relative who doesn't work. She has 4 kids and lives in government housing which while it's hardly a posh gated community, it's a pretty decent 3 bedroom town house that she pays less than $200 bucks for. Meanwhile any money she does come across (mostly mooching from other relatives) is spend on dining out, cable television, cell phones, and other non necessities. There is nothing wrong with her that she can't work. Perhaps there isn't any solution to filter out the moochers from those who truly need the help and we just have to chalk it up to life not being fair, but I hear you, OP. Sometimes it really stinks.
I have a problem with other people receiving sizable deductions, just because they have children. Everyone making the same income should pay the same in taxes, regardless of family size.
Sizable deduction? You clearly are overestimating how much credit one gets on a tax return for a child. Do you use TurboTax or something similar? Run your taxes again this year and add a child. I think you'll see it will not affect your monthly take home in any significant way.
You also fail to account that you also get a deduction on your own taxes as an individual. In a household, you can count your kids as dependents because they're not filing their own taxes. (Freeloading toddlers!)
As far as take home you are choosing to save a portion of your income into retirement and HSA. That's your choice. Set those contributions to zero and your take home will increase. You won't have anything for retirement but you can't have it both ways.
I don't think single folks have a right to complain because 1st off married folks are taxed even heavier the so called marriage tax.
Say you make $100k and your take home pay is $75k
A married couple both making $100k each for a total of $200k, their take home pay just purely without deductions can be just around $145k meaning their take home pay each is actually less than yours. Probably $72k each because of the higher tax bracket of their combined income. Some people would file independently which is arguably the dumbest thing to do because you can only claim your shared deduction on one tax form which means your kids or mortgage deduction can only appear on one tax form.
Married couples don't have it better than single folks and they have to spend more money and resources to keep the family running and I don't think the government gives married couples enough breaks.
I don't think it's fair to tell someone they don't have any right to complain because they make a high salary and can afford to pay more than someone else. I don't have any problem with my tax money going to help someone who is truly disabled and can't work, or someone who IS working and needs some additional help. But too many people get away with doing absolutely nothing while everyone else foots the bill. I have a relative who doesn't work. She has 4 kids and lives in government housing which while it's hardly a posh gated community, it's a pretty decent 3 bedroom town house that she pays less than $200 bucks for. Meanwhile any money she does come across (mostly mooching from other relatives) is spend on dining out, cable television, cell phones, and other non necessities. There is nothing wrong with her that she can't work. Perhaps there isn't any solution to filter out the moochers from those who truly need the help and we just have to chalk it up to life not being fair, but I hear you, OP. Sometimes it really stinks.
Social welfare is not a terribly large portion of the federal budget. If you want to rail about poor uses of your tax money (although its not like your taxes cover the cost of our government--borrowing at obscenely low interest rates lets us spend more than we bring in), then there are better places to look.
We spend $28 billion on Section 8, $9 billion on public housing, $77.5 billion on food stamps, $10 billion on school lunches, $8.6 billion on SCHIP (children's health insurance), $6.8 billion on TANF (cash welfare available temporarily for people out of work and somewhat longer for people working 30+ hours per week), $14 billion on the Make Work Pay tax credit (credit for working people), $22 billion on the refundable child credit, $55.5 billion on the EITC (refundable credit for people making less than $38,000 - $51,500, depending on number of dependant children--$14,340 for a single person with no children), and $56.5 billion on SSI (cash stipends to low income people over 65, blind people, or disabled people).
In the context of a $3.8 trillion budget, these non-social security/medicaid/medicare "welfare" programs look pretty reasonable to me. You're not going to make a huge dent in the federal budget by cutting all of them permanently. We're talking about $287.9 billion, or ~7.5% of the federal budget, of which $91.5 billion are tax credits. There are dozens of smaller social programs that run up another ~$260 billion, some of which you might characterize as welfare, others of which you would not. The biggest remaining chunk is Education spending ($60 billion), of which the biggest chunk is $41.5 billion for Pell Grants.
For comparison, we spend $672.9 billion on the Department of Defense (17.7%), $940.9 billion on HHS (including Medicare and Medicaid--totaling 24.7%), and $883 billion on Social Security Administration (23.2%).
I make 96K/year. I absolutely love my job; however, I'm taxed tremendously because I'm single, and do not have any dependents. I pay around $1100/month in federal taxes, $580/month in state taxes and close to $600/month towards social security.
I put away a good amount in my 401K, traditional IRA and health savings account each month to help reduce my tax burden, but I still feel like a drained piggy bank. Does anyone else have this problem?
you should feel good about yourself- paying all those taxes, so others dont have to work,,
reduce your tax burden???
put as much in your ira as you can,,
talk to a tax accountant,,, maybe you could buy a house, or apartment buildings for rental income- an investment with alot of write-offs
i did this for quite a few yrs,,, and alot of potential for write-offs that can come back tax time
i get stung pretty hard at tax time- i talked to my tax accountant to see what options i have and how can i get some of this ridiculous taxes back
maybe start your own business on the side of some sort- like an ebay business, and if you designate a "home office" you can write off some of the expenses
i did that for a few years....
I don't think it's fair to tell someone they don't have any right to complain because they make a high salary and can afford to pay more than someone else. I don't have any problem with my tax money going to help someone who is truly disabled and can't work, or someone who IS working and needs some additional help. But too many people get away with doing absolutely nothing while everyone else foots the bill. I have a relative who doesn't work. She has 4 kids and lives in government housing which while it's hardly a posh gated community, it's a pretty decent 3 bedroom town house that she pays less than $200 bucks for. Meanwhile any money she does come across (mostly mooching from other relatives) is spend on dining out, cable television, cell phones, and other non necessities. There is nothing wrong with her that she can't work. Perhaps there isn't any solution to filter out the moochers from those who truly need the help and we just have to chalk it up to life not being fair, but I hear you, OP. Sometimes it really stinks.
good post ..
there's so much fraud in the system, those that truly need it, dont recieve it..
our state recently searched where the "social" and basic necessities help is going
they found the foodstamp card was paying for alcohol, cigarettes, strippers, and being sold for drugs
again,,,no follow up the system,,,just government programs growing upon itself,,,with little checks and balances..
Location: RI, MA, VT, WI, IL, CA, IN (that one sucked), KY
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Fraud, percentage wise, has been found to be a very small percentage overall. That is one reason there isn't more enforcement to combat it. It costs more to catch and stop the fraud that exists than the fraud costs.
Sucks to be you. I'd quite my job blow all my money have lots of kids for the EITC, get section 8 food stamps and an obamaphone. You would have it made then.
I agree! Why should she suffer like this when she can put her vagina to work instead of her brain and live off extra bits of everyone else's taxes with special filing statuses and credits! Don't get married OP if you have those kids, because the filing status "head of household" is way better taxwise than any other! Oh, and please note, Ih2puo, the new word for food stamps is "SNAP!"
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