Quote: @"BarrNone55" said:
@ IDVikingfan said:
Ahhh, another liberal reaching across the aisle with an olive branch.... Political discourse in this country is totally in the crapper! I can't see anyone that I would be proud to vote for in 2020.
The last olive branch I received from the right was to be murdered and buried in a communal grave with others of my political leanings.
I was just playing with you Barr, I knew you and crew would get all lathered up! Trump made me do it! :p For me, there are few politicians that I trust and not a fan of either political party. The left treated Bush and Trump as the great Satan and the right did the same toward Obama. Sometimes the points were good, sometimes pure BS. I do enjoy a reasoned discourse but very hard to find in these days of hyperpartisanship.
Quote: @"BarrNone55" said:
@ IDVikingfan said:
Ahhh, another liberal reaching across the aisle with an olive branch.... Political discourse in this country is totally in the crapper! I can't see anyone that I would be proud to vote for in 2020.
The last olive branch I received from the right was to be murdered and buried in a communal grave with others of my political leanings.
LMAO
Yet here you are.
All I can comment on is this....
among all his "promises" that haven't materialized, I was hopeful for his "tax cuts". Hopeful, but not optimistic....but I thought "let's wait and see"....
WOW! I saw another $30 a month on my take home.....
Then hit with $7,000 ON TOP of the additional monies my wife and I put aside for taxes every year. $7,000! I had to increase the amount I withhold (in ADDITION to the money I was ALREADY setting aside) by $500 a month. That's a pretty damn nice car payment right there.
Are we great again? No. There is no "middle-class" anymore. This country is great if your rich or poor or illegal.....If you still have to get up every morning to keep the heat on however you're F'd.
I wouldn't piss on the guy if he was on fire.
Vanguard, can you explain your situation a bit more? I'm in the lower middle class bracket and I received a 3% cut. Nice, easily seen boost in take home pay.
https://smartasset.com/taxes/trump-tax-brackets
Being hit with an $7000 increase in taxes with the changing rates seems a bit unusual. Bracket creep could potentially do it if you had a boost in income that just barely moved you into the next upper bracket.
Wife and I both work, I'm north of 100k annually, my wife north of 60k.
filed a joint return (but our tax guy said it wouldn't matter) apparently we make too much money to be able to keep any of it. Good salaries, BUT we are in CA. Where it doesn't go very far, what with $4.29 for gas, $500 water bills and property taxes that are higher than Maui.
We were not alone, and based on our discussions with friends NOT unusual....ALL of our friends / teachers / CPAs (mostly) took it up the rear-end. Some at $5k, others at $10k. Pretty sad when you have additional money come off your check every month to keep feeding Uncle Sam, then be asked to crap out another $7k.
Our income is a little over 100,000 after deductions and we saw a decrease in federal tax rate from 25% to 22%. State taxes remained the same so it was clear cut change in income. Did CA state taxes change? Sorry to hear you had an increase in taxes.
High tax states like NY and California got burned if you pay a lot of state taxes.
Quote: @Vanguard83 said:
Wife and I both work, I'm north of 100k annually, my wife north of 60k.
filed a joint return (but our tax guy said it wouldn't matter) apparently we make too much money to be able to keep any of it. Good salaries, BUT we are in CA. Where it doesn't go very far, what with $4.29 for gas, $500 water bills and property taxes that are higher than Maui.
We were not alone, and based on our discussions with friends NOT unusual....ALL of our friends / teachers / CPAs (mostly) took it up the rear-end. Some at $5k, others at $10k. Pretty sad when you have additional money come off your check every month to keep feeding Uncle Sam, then be asked to crap out another $7k.
The only way for it to have worked out thay way was you were filing one hell of a schedual A (intemized deductions). Its possible. Maybe even probable in CA?? I know it didnt work that way here in TN. I know of one family that paid more. He is in auto repair. He is W2 and was writting tools and equipment off as an itemized deduction and now he didnt have in excess of the 20k standard defuction to do so. probably cost him in the $3000 range.
With your realestate taxes, mortgage interest etc if you had been writting north of $20k a year off of Sch A then it could make sense that losing your $4050/person person excemption netted you in about a $7-8k increase in taxes.
Thats the only logical conclusion I can come up with. Otherwise it had to have come from wages/interest/gains increases.
State and Federal went up, and pretty much every one of our friends / family.
CA. is a tax nightmare. They're now trying to tax water, and gas is going up Again July 1 another 5 to 7 cents a gallon, on top of the most expensive gas in the country. We are the only ones in the neighborhood with grass...no one else can afford the $500 water bill...and THATS just trying to keep our grass from dying.
We're leaving CA. in a month, it actually costs less living in Maui. Lived my whole life in CA., and just can't take it any more. Crime, filth, homeless, crack addicts, smog, concrete, traffic and asshats.
Aloha M-Kkers We're outta here.
This bears repeating.
From Yale Psychiatrist:
"The sense of grandiose omnipotence that he displays seems especially appealing to his emotionally-needy followers. No matter what the world says, he fights back against criticism, continues to lie in the face of truth, and above all is still president. What matters is that he is winning, not whether he is honest or law-abiding. This may seem puzzling to the rest of us, but when you are overcome with feelings of powerlessness, this type of cartoonish, exaggerated force is often more important than true ability. This is the more primitive morality, as we call it, of “might makes right,” which in normal development you grow out of by age five."
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