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Comment by wildwood | Hacker News Reader

You're only paying 35% in US federal taxes if you're making over 400K a year. Someone making $100K to $150K is in the 28% bracket.

And you're probably only paying 10% in state tax if you live in California. Most other states' income tax are around 5 or 6 percent, and some are at zero.

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35% = 28% income tax + 6.2% social security tax + 1.45% medicare tax

It's actually even worse than that, because the employer is paying an additional 6.2% + 1.45% on your behalf. But from the employer's point of view, it's just another cost of having an employee. It's a zero-sum game. The employee is really paying 28% income + 14.4% social security + 2.9% medicare = 45%. (Actually a hair less because the employer's contribution is not considered taxable income, but in any case the effective tax is > 35%)

Well, even if the employer pays the cost on paper, because the supply of labor is relatively inelastic, realistically, employees, at least in a competitive labor market, eat that cost through lower wages. I’m convinced it’s a way for the government to hide half the cost of insolvent social programs from people who don’t know about the employer share and/or don’t understand that they’re likely paying most of the cost.

Social Security tax caps out at an income of $113,700[1]. Medicare tax actually goes up slightly at $200,000, though.

[1] http://ssa-custhelp.ssa.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/240/~/so...

Are you serious? What about sales tax? that is 10% in California. Throw that on top. What about property tax? Car Tax?, Health care tax (yeah since the state forces all hospitals to treat anyone without insurance [every ER at midnight is a pediatricians office for illegals - almost every kid there is literally running around with emergency sniffles and an emergency low grade fever] I get to flip the bill so I consider that a tax). There are plenty more. With all the taxes and double and triple taxes, it is easily 50%.

>Are you serious? What about sales tax? that is 10% in California. Throw that on top. What about property tax? Car Tax?...

Wtf? That's not how taxes work, guy.

Well...sure it is. Obviously you can't add up the numbers (like your parent may or may not be implying you can), but if you really want to, you can look at all the dollars you have coming in, and all the dollars you pay to taxes of any kind, and determine a percentage. I have no idea if it would be anywhere near 50%, but I suspect it would be more than 35%.

(Which seems fine to me...)

If you calculate like this you should count the roads and other public infrastructure you are using as income...

...Why? The goal of the exercise is to figure out what percentage of your income really goes to taxes, not the amount of personal value you get from those taxes. That would be a really interesting thing to figure out too, but it's not what I was talking about. (If you read my comment as implying that I think the taxes I pay outstrip the personal value I get from them, you misread it - my only point is that you absolutely can figure out what your real taxation percentage is.)

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