• MordercaSkurwysyn@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month 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.

    • fishy@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      That’s the general conservative mindset. It’s why lies work so well on them, get them to believe the lie and they’ll never let it go.

  • TheDoozer@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    When you are talking large income to larger income, that makes total sense, but are there limits for access to things like child tax credits where if you go over you are no longer eligible, causing significant increase (I just looked, and it’s at $200k single of $400k jointly, so unless you have A LOT of children, I suppose there wouldn’t be a huge effect)? Similar to people on government assistance who go from getting full assistance to getting nothing at a certain income level?

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      The big one there is food and housing subsidies. The way way we have it set-up can create a situation where a raise can cost you benefits that are worth more than the raise. With disability benefits there can actually be limits on the amount of money you’re allowed to have in general, which means that disabled people can find themselves in places where not only do they need to avoid trying to find work that they might be able to do, since trying and failing can still make them need to restart the benefits application process or even pay back historical benefits, but they also need to reject gifts above a certain value and can’t prepare for any type of emergency, like a car breakdown.

      It’s annoying because it creates a disincentive to do the things that would help people on assistance actually get off of it, when the people who push for those limits purport to want them for exactly that reason.
      Tapering off benefits as income grows, but at a slower rate than the income growth creates a continuous incentive for a person on benefits to increase their earned income. (If you lose $500 in benefits for every $1000 in income, your $1000 raise still puts $500 extra in your pocket, instead of potentially costing you your entire $8000 food subsidy)

      Can’t do that though, because it doesn’t punish people for the audacity of needing help.

    • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      This is a big factor. A lot of people conflate less benefits with higher taxes because fear-brain just knows they both equal increased hardship in the end. They’re technically wrong but their statistically slightly more active amygdalas are responding to a genuine threat, just one that they’ve been very skillfully misdirected into helping worsen.

        • Apytele@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          edit-2
          1 month ago

          tbh the more I learn and experience that’s most of the human experience. I had a Minister when I was young that said there’s really only two human emotions, fear and love, and that without significant intervention fear pretty much always wins. I’ve been working in psychiatry for almost a decade now and there’s lots of finer points to be made about human psychology but in the end it pretty much all does just boil down to fear and love.

          He was an exceptionally good Minister, to the extent that for while I didn’t understand how common it was for people to be deeply betrayed by a church leader. It was not uncommon for people in the community to genuinely compare him to Fred Rogers (who was incidentally also a Presbyterian minister). Very similar background, temperament, points of advocacy, and even appearance and mannerism; if they hadn’t both been alive at the same time it almost might make me believe in reincarnation.

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    Afrikaans
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month 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

  • MisterFrog@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    Hmmm, I better send a suggestion letter to the ATO (Australian Taxation Office) to put the tax bracket breakdown directly into your return with the amounts populated.

    Hey, they give us a breakdown graph of where our tax is going, this seems like it’s within the realm of possibility.

    I think sadly there are also many people here who have no idea how tax brackets work…

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

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

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      This all boils down to a common misconception about ‘tax brackets’.

      To simplify, pretend there’s a 28% tax bracket up to 100,000 dollars, and a 33% tax bracket when you hit 100k. The first 100k is always taxed at 28%, no matter what you make, and it’s only the incremental amount that gets taxed heavier. So here in this example, that would mean tax burden would be 28,000.33 instead of 28,000.28. These are not the exact brackets or percentages, but it’s at least showing the right magnitude of increase versus total amount.

      However, many people are “afraid” of bumping a higher tax bracket. They think the tax bill would go from 28,000.28 to 33,000.33. That the tax bracket bumps up all your liability. I remember growing up people saying “I have to watch out and not hit the bigger tax bracket, if I’m close then I need a big raise to make it worth it, or else the raise is going to cost me more than it would make me”. This a big driver of antipathy toward democrat tax policies, a belief that mild success will punish them, despite it only increasing on the incremental amount.

      • Lyrl@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        edit-2
        1 month ago

        A lot of US benefits have “benefit cliffs” where making $1 more substantially reduces or even completely disqualifies a person from programs like SNAP (food stamps) or childcare subsidies or Medicaid. https://www.ncsl.org/human-services/introduction-to-benefits-cliffs-and-public-assistance-programs

        It’s not surprising people whose families are directly affected by, or who know people affected by, benefit cliffs think the lawmakers set up taxes the same way.

      • doingthestuff@lemy.lol
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 month ago

        We took a huge hit in our coat of living when we fell off the benefit cliff. I know it’s lost credits rather than more taxes but it doesn’t really matter when you make more and struggle at least as much as before.

      • LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 month ago

        To be more specific the first 100,000 isn’t taxed at 28%. The 44 to 100k range would be, but below that will be taxed at lower percentages. The first ~10k you make is taxed at 10%, and then it increases throughout.

        • jj4211@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 month ago

          If getting specific, there’s no 28 percent or 33 percent bracket, so these are all examples rather than real figures. I did make a comment using real numbers, same general magnitude but just more specific about the brackets.

    • CluelessLemmyng@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      That one dollar in the 33% bracket has .33 in taxes instead of .28. So their obligation goes up .05 per every dollar in the 33% tax bracket.

  • Owl@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    i dont understand, isnt this graph showing that 2/3 of democrats dont understand how taxes work vs only 1/3 of republicans? wouldnt correct mean that yes, your tax bill goes up?

    • AngryPancake@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      The options were that your taxes go up by a small amount or substantially. The correct answer is by a small amount since you only pay higher taxes on the one dollar that you’re over.

      • nibbler@discuss.tchncs.de
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 month ago

        took me a minute to realize that, too. The wording is just not too good in the graph. “Your tax bill would go up small amount” is not a proper sentence. I would have expected yes/no (which of course makes no sense either).

        The question should have been: “if you earn $1 more now, will you have more or less money after tax?”.

    • LePoisson@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      Nah, also you’re never going to lose out on income by making more money.

      Like others said, the only possible exception is if you’re getting government assistance and get kicked off programs you’re in because you went past the cut off. So, as an example, let’s say you’re low income and you get vouchers for school. You could make enough money that you’re no longer eligible for that benefit but the amount you make over the cut off is less than what the benefit was.

      But, that’s a specific situation. At no time will your taxes increase more than whatever additional income you’re getting. Period.

      I’ve tried to explain that too many times now in my life and I’m not even that old. Just a lot of people are bamboozled by propaganda and lies.

  • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month 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.

  • Carrot@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month 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.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month 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.

    • Pyr@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      1 month ago

      I seriously don’t understand why we don’t have a mandatory class that covers taxes, T4 slips, investing, labour laws, budgeting, reading nutritional information on foods, etc.

      • rumba@lemmy.zip
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        0
        ·
        1 month ago

        The nutritional stuff is like 5th grade science, about the time you should be burning peanuts with a bunsen burner.

        I’ve seen a few schools that have an elective financials class. But I think they’re still trying to balance checkbooks.

        The problem is it’s just one class and nobody takes classes seriously in high school. Most of them have forgotten the things that they used to know when it gets 20 30 40 years past there education.

        It’s like we need some kind of driver’s ed test but for living

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          ·
          1 month ago

          I have never been invited to burn peanuts with a bunsen burner. Showing the relationship between chemical energy and thermal energy and the sometimes surprising differences between foods?

          I think we had too much separation between diet classes and physical science. I think I recall doing something like a puzzle, with physical pieces, where you tried to make a days food using different foods. The point was that it’s easier and you get more if you pick the healthier foods. Instead everyone knew what the point was and then fucked around making the dumbest possible meal that fit the defined criteria.
          I seem to recall the teacher not being amused with my solution that only has one food group per meal. (What’s for breakfast? 9 eggs. Lunch? 3 unseasoned grilled chicken breasts. Dinner? Six baked potatos, plain)

          • rumba@lemmy.zip
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            0
            ·
            1 month ago

            Yeah, there’s a lot of lessons in school that we’re not actually ready for. We need some kind of continuing education stuff like they do in the medical profession. When we hit our 30’s and 40’s and our bodies handle food differently, we need those diet courses again. And when we move out of home, we need those finance and home economics classes that haven’t been looked at for a decade.

  • angband@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month ago

    this was pushed in the 80’s/90’s on conservative talk radio (iirc). strangely, it gets an ideological push from the phenomenon of income reduction resulting from lost welfare benefits as income increases. the brain correlates things irrationally.

  • Kuranashi@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    0
    ·
    1 month 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.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      ·
      edit-2
      1 month ago

      I think this is at least partially the result of intentional propaganda. It benefits the elite greatly if a lot of Americans are screaming against higher top tax rates due to this faulty logic. There are also a lot of anecdotes of people not accepting higher paying job offers or promotions within their company, which also benefits the business owners.