I agree people in high SALT states likely didn’t get a tax cut because they could no longer deduct their taxes to the full amount…so their taxable income increased.
I would like to see more focus on a wider set of people to see what, exactly, was the effect of the tax cuts. What is the effective tax rate on people by income level both pre- and post-tax?
A discussion about refunds won’t get us there, and perpetuate people being overly-focused on refunds…which they shouldn’t be.
People sit down and calculate their effective tax rate? Should they include future spending cuts to SS and Medicare?
Taxes are getting ready to start increasing, BTW. It was written into the policy.
Yes…people should focus on their effective tax rates…and what they would be under various proposed policies.
It should be made rather easy for them to do so.
Then maybe we’d get better discussions about policy changes.
I cant speak for other people but when i do my taxes with turbo tax it makes it pretty clear what my effective rate is when i file
I just do mine by paper and pen. (I do calculate mine) but the effective rate only tells part of the story.
If you spend money on a credit card, did you increase your income?
If you pay it back in full during the payment cycle, you very well may have.
Effective rate only tells part of the story…yes…but it tells more of the story than the size of your end of year tax refund does.
Im not following
These tax cuts were not paid for by reducing spending or a surplus in the budget. They were paid for by borrowing money at the federal level.
That money will have to be paid back in the future. I just made a simple analogy. I am aware that it’s a bit more complicated, but I am very much against borrowing money just to cut taxes.
I understand where you’re going with this but your core assumption is not shared by tax cut proponents.
Under obama we had the slowest economic recovery from a recession.
Use a rake
It hasn’t gotten any faster under Trump.
Some things are just out of the control of the president.
Ahh. I thought you were asking if credit card spending increased your taxable income. I was like…wat
It does. Example, years back my department was told to prepare budgets with a 10% cut, 5% cut, 2% cut and same funding as the year before (no inflation increase). We ended up with the 2% cut. Instead of boxes of nice 2 dollar each pens, we got two years of 10 for 2 dollar pens – a lot of office supplies became the less expensive alternative. Our out of office training was cut to near nothing. We ended up shoveling our own sidewalk outside the building because the maintenance crew was not given overtime hours. There were a lot of little things that added up to 2%. We could have survived a 5% cut as well. We didn’t have any personell cuts (that was an option under the 10% cut).
Have they told you how much more they received in their paychecks during the year? was it equal to the difference in tax return from the year before?
So they didn’t get MORE take home money in each paycheck during the year (anywhere from 12 paychecks to 52 paychecks)?
I’m not rich by any means . . . . Mine was $18 per week (18 x 52 = $936 extra in my pocket). My tax return was 200 less than last year. Net gain 700 of MY money I got to keep.
Seems like little gained for the cost.
I still am a proponent of a balanced budget amendment. I still am a proponent for cuts to the budget without one.
A balanced budget amendment would be an economic disaster.
You’re talking about cutting the social security of elderly people who paid into the system their entire lives and who rely on it to survive so you can save $700 a year. Oh, and:
“According to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady (R-TX), today’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will add $1.51 trillion to the debt, before accounting for interest or possible gimmicks. This cost would likely be enough to cause debt to exceed the size of the economy by 2028 – bad news for the nation’s fiscal and economic future.”
No biggie. You saved $700!!
