• Ronno@feddit.nl
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    2 hours ago

    I’m just in awe about those 28% and 33% tax brackets. I’m in the 49,5% bracket here in The Netherlands. That being said, I’m fortunate to be in it.

  • MordercaSkurwysyn@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    2 hours ago

    Where i live we have a system where if you take sick days, they are paid 80%. 20% reduction applies only to the days you were sick. Once I got sick at the end of a month and took the last 3 days of the month and first 2 days of the next one off and she freaked out I’m about to loose 20% of 2 month’s salaries. She was and is still convinced that 20% deduction applies to a whole month worth of salary even if you take one day off that month. She almost never takes sick days and she works in a hospital… She self medicates and works with patients even when she has a transmittable diseases. Best of luck to those who have serious health problems and then get a fucking flu on top of everything from hospital staff. She is 60+ and reading the law to her doesn’t change her mind. A couple years ago she had more serious health problems and took a week off for the first time in decades, even after getting a paycheck reduced only by 5% and not 20% her perception of this issue didn’t change. She misunderstood that system once 40 years ago and she is going to take that misunderstanding to ger grave. Real world has no influence on her beliefs.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    3 hours ago

    This is absolutely an educational failing. We barely cover taxes in school. At best it’s said once in a class, gets covered in a minor question on a test and if we get it wrong, no one notices. “We” probably still got a B on the test without any CLUE how taxes work.

    Yet here we are, dismantling any nationwide effort to make education better.

    A LOT of people think 99,999 tax is 27,999 and 100,001 is 29,000, even on the democrat side. If those charts are accurate, it’s probably damn close to 50% of US citizens.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    Afrikaans
    arrow-up
    3
    ·
    7 hours ago

    Thanks, Lemmy, now I’m “that Dad”. After reading this, I went to dinner with my two teens and one of their girlfriends, so of course I had to bring this up. All three have started working after school and will need to file their taxes this year so they need to know.

    But holy crap is that a seriously uncool conversation

  • Carrot@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    35
    ·
    15 hours ago

    This belief is held by many older folks due to propoganda, and it is passed down to their children when their parents teach them about taxes. Since almost all younger folks use automated tax services, if they aren’t doing the math themselves, the fact that this isn’t true isn’t going to be discovered. I was taught the incorrect way when I was a kid, but noticed that it was wrong the first time I had to do my own taxes. But when I told my parents the way it actually worked, they didn’t believe me until I showed them the .gov site that breaks it down. I grew up in a small, blue collar town, and every single person I talked to about taxes parroted the same incorrect system.

  • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    13 hours ago

    How dumb do you have to be? By the time you make that much money you should, in theory, know the answer definitively or have a guy.

    • rumba@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      Almost everyone has a guy or uses some software. Those two things don’t help them understand and this misconception of how taxes work is but a small sample of how people form political decisions without any viable understanding of the situation they’re in or the repercussions of their actions.

      Nobody’s just making out a check for 30% and mailing it off to the IRS.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    13 hours ago

    For someone outside the American tax system, can anyone put the difference in approximate numbers?

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    ·
    21 hours ago

    It boggles my mind how many people who have had to pay taxes for decades even, don’t understand how tax brackets work.

    The only time you’ll get screwed on making more is if you were getting some sort of socialized assistance and you make a dollar over the cut off for aid.

  • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    48
    ·
    1 day ago

    I used to be a supervisor at a psych hospital and had to regularly explain this to staff who were refusing overtime. They wanted to do it, sometimes desperately so because they needed the money, but they were utterly convinced that once they crossed 40 or 45k or whatever they would be taxed higher and make it all pointless. I felt like some just didn’t want to do ot, which was fine, but some legit keep meticulous records of their earnings to ensure they wouldn’t go over the line. I swore to them it didn’t work this way but they never believed me

    • OccultIconoclast@reddthat.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      Should print out a poster infographic explaining progressive taxation and put it up on the wall in the break room

      • AA5B@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        17 hours ago

        But you have to keep it going to highlight how much wealthier people pay (although that’s tougher since their income is not “income”). Maybe throw in a few examples of the wealthiest Americans and wha recent age they pay, to not only clarify it, but retarget their anger where it belongs

    • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      23 hours ago

      We covered how taxes are calculated at school, it isn’t very complicated. Yet SO MANY people insist they end up getting paid more it made me question myself for a while.

      Although sometimes the removal of certain benefits does mean people can be worse off for £1 extra. Which if anything is just a sign that the benefits were poorly thought out and should taper off instead of being a hard limit.

      • JackbyDev@programming.dev
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        14 hours ago

        There is probably sticker shock involved. Someone who gets a raise will see a new amount of taxes witheld and may be upset. It could even be they didn’t know what the amount taken out before taxes was.

    • AlligatorBlizzard@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      9
      ·
      1 day ago

      The only way that’s a problem is if you’re on certain government benefits, if you make just a little bit too much there’s a hard cutoff for many benefits so you may end up losing more than you made in OT. But if your staff is facing this dilemma, they need to be paid more.

    • hansolo@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      24 hours ago

      Short of doing a demo with rolls of change or MnMs or something, asking people to conceptualize math that is not just simple addition is often asking too much. Especially when people’s financial literacy is learned at home from people who retired in 1996.

  • Kuranashi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    110
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    If you ever wanted proof that a population that doesn’t understand math allows the billionaires to take advantage of them here it is. This is why education systems are under attack, because if you understood how taxes work you’d more likely support higher tax rates for the rich.

    • brbposting@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      3 hours ago

      If you ever wanted proof […] here it is.

      Yes! Well yes but also no but only because…

      @General_Effort@lemmy.world I always do the web search when OP didn’t happen to think about linking a source but this is egregious DANGIT IT’S A SHITPOST I AM SO SORRY

    • ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Probably the lead poisoning have something to do with it.

      Some houses still have lead, to this day.

      I know because my city recently passed a law requiring landlords to inspect rentals for lead paint, because a lot of kids are still getting lead poisoning.

      (Its Philly btw)

    • Kairos@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      28
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      This is actually not true as it doesn’t take into account the standard deduction

      • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        20
        ·
        1 day ago

        It does not take into account a lot of things, namely the many many deductions for qualifying individuals.

      • yunxiaoli@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        Not all people take the standard deduction, this is true before all deductions and similar economic stimuli.

  • Kairos@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    57
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    I’m more concerned about the third of dems who don’t understand this.