Oh my Lord! You mean a couple with two successful careers (they're both engineers!) pay a whopping 24.1% of their income in taxes -- including income, property, sales, payroll, etc.! That's like almost a quarter! Clearly, their finances are being unreasonably hobbled by this unbearable burden. They should go Galt and see how we like it*!

After all, apart from better sanitation and medicine and education and irrigation and public health and roads and a freshwater system and baths and public order (and a public pensions system and national defense)... what have the Romans gubmint done for them?


* No offense meant to the couple in question, just those who would construe their 24% tax burden as clearly outrageous.

bojon: Lets see, family of three making less than 60k. Pretty sad engineers.

The article doesn't mention their total income, but we can approximate it from the graphs:

Gas tax is quoted as ~$700 per year.
Gas tax is about one-tenth of the "other tax" category, judging by the width of the bar.
This implies their total "other tax" is about $7,000 per year.
The "other tax" category is stated as 5.4% of income.
Their household income is thus about $7000/0.054 = $130,000.

For a couple of engineers in their mid-20s, that's respectable, if not awesome.

bojon: Lets see, family of three making less than 60k. Pretty sad engineers.

yeah, really. I hardly passed high school and make more than that.

bojon: 130k and they pay 18.7%. I have doubts. They should be 24% or more.

They have a kid and a mortgage, probably on a rather expensive house relative to their income levels. Both give you massive deductions on your 1040. They may have other write-offs as well. I can totally believe these figures.

nekom: It would have to be an awfully expensive mortgage if that were the big factor there. Unless I'm wrong, you can only write off the interest, so you'd have to pay $10,000 (is that still the standard deduction for joint filing?) in interest alone in order for it to be worth itemizing, unless you had lots of other things to make it worthwhile.

$10,000 in interest is trivially easy to achieve. With a 5% rate, that's a $200,000 loan balance. They own a home in Connecticut. The old-school three-times-your-income and 20% down mortgage would have them at $312,000 in loans (assuming they bought recently, what with being 26 and all) -- $15,600 per year in interest, and old-school mortgages like that are a thing of the distant past these days. They may well be paying $25,000 or more annually in mortgage interest.

SusanIvanova: With a 5% rate

If you can get a 5% rate outside of the market, you've either got the best bank in the world or access to a time machine.

nekom: That's nuts. I guess I'm just kind of spoiled with my reasonable $37,500 home purchase. Hell my mortgage doesn't hit 10K annually even with the principal included, much less the interest.

Median income in their town of Stratford, CT (as of 2008) was about $70k, they make almost twice that. Median home price (as of 2010) is $230k, down from $300k two years prior. If they're following the crowd, they've probably got a $400k loan, maybe more, depending on when they bought and what their terms are. Which is insane, but does quite effectively lower their tax bill.

/household income of $190k
//we rent
///because buying at current prices is insane

biatching about the second lowest tax rate (new window) in the 1st World and the one of the lowest marginal tax rates in the U.S. in 80+ years?

Go piss up a rope, you deluded, entitled misanthropes. To live in a civilization that provides you with enough comfort to sit around on your ass biatching about tax rates means someone has to actually pay taxes.

impaler: Hender: SusanIvanova: With a 5% rate

If you can get a 5% rate outside of the market, you've either got the best bank in the world or access to a time machine.

Huh?

OK, I'll rephrase.

"If you can get a 5% return on an investment anywhere other than the stock market or a mutual fund, you've either got the best bank in the world or access to a time machine."

I haven't gotten a 5% return in a savings account or a CD in about 6 years.

Texian: second lowest tax rate

Bested by Switzerland AGAIN! GRAAAH!

coco ebert: Texian: biatching about the second lowest tax rate (new window) in the 1st World and the one of the lowest marginal tax rates in the U.S. in 80+ years?

Go piss up a rope, you deluded, entitled misanthropes. To live in a civilization that provides you with enough comfort to sit around on your ass biatching about tax rates means someone has to actually pay taxes.

So much this. I really wish more Americans would live abroad for a while, travel even, and see how much people pay in other countries. Better yet, they can see what nice things higher tax rates can get you.

No, no, no. Traveling to other countries is elitist and un-American. Like paying for R&D, education, and infrastructure and regulating private industry for the public good.

How much do we get for what we pay is the real question. Not e-farking-nough is the short answer.

Compared to what and when?

no fat baby tax?

Enough with the trolltastic headlines, okay?