On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 14:30:54 -0800, "ScottW"
wrote:
"dave weil" wrote in message
.. .
On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 11:40:47 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:
"dave weil" wrote in message
On Tue, 27 Jan 2004 09:19:03 -0500, George M. Middius
wrote:
Here is what poor Scottie believes, in no particular order:
You left one out - married women making $40,000 are in the highest
Federal tax bracket.
Shows how little you guys understand about married life. To make it easy
for
dimwits like you two Middius and Yustabe,
Why are you talking to Scott's friend Art here?
I'll hypothesize that a woman
works, and files jointly with her husband. So after deductions, what tax
bracket are they in? Depends a lot on what the husband makes, no?
Yep. I just don't happen to believe that Scott makes $135,000 a year
(he hasn't exactly been forthcoming about his income or the actual
amount of taxes that he pays, now has he)?
If plan "B" is the wife not working, isn't it fair to look at her
income as if it
was in the tax bracket they jumped up to when they were both working?
Isn't it also fair to say that if you're paying a higher tax rate by
filing jointly than by filing separately, it's rather stupid to file
jointly?
You don't get to use the single tax tables.
Please do some research.
http://www.fool.com/taxes/2000/taxes000526.htm
Thanks for the info.
However, going to Schedule Y-1 and Y-2, using $100,000 as a nice round
figure, at that income level, the marriage penalty is a whopping $644
if married filing separately. Hardly the rip-off that's implied.
Still, I don't think that people should be charged for the privilege
of being married.
And I went ahead and figured out what the difference between single
unmarrieds making 100,000 and a couple making the same amount and
filing jointly. Turns out that the joint filers actually pay $2851
LESS tax than the single person. So where's the marriage penalty
there? Sounds like a single penalty to me.
If I've misfigured, let me know. The amounts that I figured we
Single - 21,446
Married filing jointly - 18,595
Married filing separately - 22,090
The other income levels don't look all that different, although I
didn't figure them out. Since you refuse to disclose what you actually
make, I don't feel like it's any big deal.
I don't think that married people should be penalized vis a
vis single people, but I also don't believe that they should get a
special "marriage" tax break either. especially since single people
without children are already subsidising the education of their
children at a state level. At least the federal government allows
those property taxes to be excluded from federal taxes, but Scott gets
that as well.
BTW, my taking a 50% figure for actual taxes paid was just a poke at
him, since it's obvious that one doesn't pay taxes at their nominal
tax rate. I'll note that I just entered a new tax bracket by something
like $400. Fortunately, only that $400 is taxed at 25%. But
regardless, it's obvious that my *actual* tax burden is more like 15%,
not counting SS, Medicare, property and sales taxes and all of those
other things that Scott threw into the mix after the fact. At first he
demanded that I should be paying $7000 toward the federal budget -
then he changed his tune and started including all of the other state,
county and other taxes that we pay.
No Dave, that was your misinterpretation. Keeping your facts
straight seems to be quite a challenge for you.
I want to remind you that he claimed that she was in a 50% tax bracket
in the context of how much each person's share of the federal budget
was - I claim that that was misleading to the extreme.
Sorry you don't believe but it was true for the year we made the
decision and the subsequent year as well.
No it wasn't. There *is* no federal 50% tax bracket. And the federal
tax bracket is the only thing you can use to determine ones share of
the FEDERAL BUDGET. Why you gloss over that is probably because you
don't want to admit that you're wrong. ,shrug
ScottW