Comment on Is 33 cents a small amount of money?
TheRealKuni@midwest.social 2 weeks agoYeah what does “substantially” mean in this context?
The context is laid out clearly. You earn one additional dollar and that one additional dollar puts you in the 33% tax bracket.
Your tax bill would go up by 33% of one dollar. $0.33. Total.
The question doesn’t specify whether we’re talking about total dollars paid or just how much the tax percentage increases in that bracket.
It’s irrelevant. Your “total dollars paid” in taxes would increase by $0.33, and the difference that extra dollar is taxed vs the previous dollar is $0.05. Neither of these are “substantial.”
This question simply asks whether 0: you have reading comprehension skills and 1: you understand how tax brackets work.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
I mean I understand all of these things. But the question is worded in a way that can be interpreted wildly differently depending on the political affiliation of the person responding.
Mistic@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It’s simple math and understanding of the law, what does political affiliation has to do with it?
0.05$ is not a substantial amount of money regardless of your political views.
tias@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
No, 0.05$ is not a substantial amount of money. A 5 percentage points tax increase could be considered substantial. The question is worded so that it can be interpreted in the latter way, and it’s also using a subjective word like “substantial”. Somebody who is politically against taxes is likely to interpret it the latter way, and hence the poll’s results are skewed by its vagueness.
If we want to measure math skills and understanding of the law, a better question would be by how many dollars the total tax would increase. This would also give us better information on how far off people are.
General_Effort@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This may be a language issue. “Bill” in this context means the total amount you have to pay. EG A restaurant bill is what you get from a waiter when you want to pay.
jj4211@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
But your tax bill doesn’t go up 5%.
Ok, let’s get this close to real numbers. The cited tax brackets don’t exist, so I’ll go with the 24% to 32%. So if your earnings are 1 dollar into the 32% tax bracket, you are going from AGI $191,950 to $191,951. Your tax bill at $191,950 would be:
And your tax bill at $191,951 would be:
Your tax bill goes up by a whopping $0.32 or 0.01% by earning that extra dollar, meaning you still got to keep $0.68 of that dollar. When they say that dollar would cause their tax bill to go up a lot, that’s pretty much exclusively owing to the misconception that people assume their tax bill would have gone to $61,424, so in the misconception that dollar would have cost them $22,313.
Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
It asks about the tax bill, as in the total dollar amount paid, not the tax percentage.