• medgremlin@midwest.social
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      4 months ago

      The bottom 50% of Americans make less than $40k a year. They do pay some federal taxes, but with the standard deduction, the 19.3% of working Americans that make less than $15k a year don’t pay any federal taxes. The standard deduction goes up to $22.5k for a head of household (i.e. a single working parent). Given that the federal minimum wage still works out to $15,080 a year, that means a full-time minimum wage worker doesn’t make enough to get hit with income taxes.

      Edit: Here’s a wikipedia article with the numbers I pulled and the tax bracket info is on the IRS website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_income_in_the_United_States

      • Psychadelligoat@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        4 months ago

        An important thing to note is that 50% don’t pay federal tax, as you said here

        They still pay sales tax and taxes of that sort (which actually are significant), just not the federal income/property taxes

        • callouscomic@lemm.ee
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          4 months ago

          Yes, federal income tax. Let’s also add that sales tax are far more regressive than other forms of taxation. Some places use those taxes more that are more likely to disproportionately affect the lower income population.