Single Mom and Taxes

Let’s look at why the tax system is so unfair shall we? Joe loser never did shit in school and has no motivation so he has a 20k a yr job. So he makes 20k, but gets a 3700.00 exemption and a 5950.00 standard deduction. So he pays TAXES on $10,350.00 He pays 10% on his income up to 8700.00 so that’s $870.00 in taxes. He pays 15% on the amount over 8700 which is $247.50. Total federal taxes owed…$1117.50 / $20,000 is 5.5875% tax. Same scenario single mom…well she would be MAKING MONEY on the tax system… $20,000-$8700 head of household standard deduction, minus her 3700 exemption, minus baby 3700 exemption, is $390 in tax owed. Plus the $1000 child credit… She just paid ZERO FEDERAL INCOME TAX and got $610 from some other taxpayer. She paid -3% tax!!!

Tell’em Dawg.

Let’s look at what we (AF posters) do.

  • $100k+ salaries
  • Weak azz standard deductable of $6K
  • 30% Federal tax rate
  • 8% state income tax
  • 3% in payroll taxes we’ll never see benefits from

Then we indirectly boost the economy by:

  • Spending $10k/yr a the S-Club helping strippers pay their way through Junior College
  • $20k at resturants and bar paying for those who never made it through high school
  • Plus we’re productive members of society- posting of AF, teaching the rest of the world on the “right” way to live; everything from prepaid phone plans to little league fastballs and colon cleanses

The way I look at it, we should all get checks back from uncle sam for making the world a better place

^ Das What I’m Sayin!

CLAWN CLAWN GO AWAY COME AGAIN ANOTHER DAY…

CFAvsMBA, did you score an exotic dancer investment client lastnight at your favourite club?

It’s friday and he wants to meet his weekly quota…

PS…Chad how about you start paying for quality and not quantity.

See my strip club post to get the answer to that.

Seen it and was being sarcastic

I dunno, 2.4 thousandths of a cent per taxpayer per year (3700 / (300 million * (1-47%))) is the going public value of a year of maternal care for one child.

If the kid ends up in jail, it’s going to cost the public $80,000 per year at least. So maybe we should think about supporting mothering as an avoidance of public jail costs strategy.

$0.000024 tax subsidy / $80,000 jailing costs = 0.0000000003

So if making motherhood easier by $3700 per year improves the chance of not going to jail by 3 hundred-millionths of a percent or more, it’s a value deal. Obviously that’s a highly simplified calculation, but this is the sort of thinking that one should be looking at.

EDIT: Oops, the tax mathematics is a little different… $1000 child tax credit, plus $3700 exemption/deduction = $1370, assuming she would pay taxes at the normal poverty rate of 10%. So the public subsidy to child care is about 1/3 what I reported and the probability hurdle is about 1/3: i.e. subsidy of 0.8 thousandths of a cent per taxpayer, and a probability hurlle of decreasing the likelihood of going to jail by 1 hundred millionth of a percent.

See, I want to press the Like button to bchad’s comment but I can’t :frowning:

That smacks of blackmail of the rich by the poor. “Give us money or else our sons will rape your daughters.” Why can’t she take responsibility to raise the kid?

By the same token, the rich finance guys have been blackmailing the taxpayers (other rich people) - “bail us out or we will take down the whole financial system.” Instead of saying “F U”, this and the previous administration came up with TARP and other crazy Ponzi schemes.[*]

The only way to stop blackmailers is to say No.

[*] Please don’t tell me TARP money all got paid back. Yeah it got paid back because banks got fre money from the Fed to buy treasuries that yielded upto 4%. Even my retard uncle could make money on that. And the more insidious bailouts are still outstanding - AIG (to bail out GS), Fannie and Freddie.

TARP was an apt name. They just hid one big pile of dirt under it. It has to be a conscious irony. "Look how we can fool the taxpayers! With a big TARP!)

+1

It’s all about blackmailing.

It’s enlightened self interest. And the mother isn’t planning to raise the kid to rape or sell drugs to the rich if she doesn’t get her $610.

Since when did the rich turn into such pu$$ies, anyway? Anything that they dislike or is mildly inconvenient is suddenly blackmail by the poor?

So - there is no need to give her $610 then. If she does her job iright, no negative consequences will occur.

It’s a little more than mild inconvenience to have leeches sucking your blood. And saying, just one more leech can’t hurt, since there are so many already.

I do understand social contract and why flat tax is regressive and why objectivism sucks monkey balls. But no need to go to the other extreme and reward irresponsibility either. Happy medium, like Buddha said.

In a nutshell, if you breed, pay for your brood. Don’t ask me for a handout under normal circumstances. The taxpayer will help only if you have extreme hardship such as potential starvation or a serious medical condition. Hand up, not a hand out, etc.

Like

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph CFAvsMBA I would be raging right now if I didn’t have such a good weekend. I live in CA so my payroll taxes are off of the chart.

I fixed that for you.

You’re clueless, thats not how these things play out in the real world. By providing a social welfare net and ensuring atleast some equality of opportunity you are making an invetment which pays enormous dividends in the future. What you are doing is improving the likelyhood that someone will grow up to become a productive tax paying member of society. Instead, the alternative is you end up with a whole host of social problems and you end up spending all that money saved on foodstamps and thensome by housing people in prison which is not only morally questionable it is also a hge waste of economic and human capital.

I must be clueless because I don’t think this is so black and white. A net is to catch someone from falling to their death. It is not meant to be a perpetual crutch. Have some compassion for a middle-class taxpayer too, not just single moms. I am not only expected to pay for my kids, you expect me to pay for hers too, and not with a respectful attitude that a beggar will show but as a moral imperative. On what basis? Did I ask her to have a kid she cannot afford? Is her and her kid’s life my responsibility? I am already paying for all the common services (roads, schools, social workers’ salaries.) On top of that she gets money from the government in the form of EITC (earned income tax credit) even as I pay into the system.

Note that I am not saying that her life is a bed of roses, it’s definitely not. But neither is mine just because I earn more. I work for my money, nobody gives it to me for free and nobody has a right to it without my consent. Charity has to be voluntary.

You don’t get it, either way you’re going to be paying. You pay a little bit now and a kid gets a chance or you pay big time when he’s in the corrections system.

The relatively high crime rate, social dysfunction and huge expenses incurred within the judicial system are all very strongly correlated with the higher level of inequality and corresponding lack of social safety net within the United States.