Originally posted by: EagleKeeper
How does the government insure that you will pay taxes on your income. Payroll is where the best spot is to ensure that the funds get to Uncle.
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Going on that assumption, one will have a pure socialized welfare state.
I think I didn't make myself clear when I typed just a short post. When you get a paycheck, you pay income tax + social security tax + medicare tax. Commonly, people split this into two categories: income tax + other tax. Often people call the latter payroll tax. So out of your check you pay income tax + payroll tax. Maybe it isn't the correct term, but that is the terminology that every place I've worked at and every person I know uses. Defined that way, it is 15.3% tax for the low to mid income people and the percentage drops for high income people (this is the total tax paid per wage earner). But if you don't like that definition, I won't mention it again on this thread, I'll just call it "other" tax and use numbers.
So if you are in the $10k income level, you pay the expected income tax + 15.3%. If you are at the $87k income level, you pay the expected income tax + 15.3%. If you are at the $200k income level, you pay the expected income tax + 8.3%. If you are that $1M income level, you pay the expected income tax + 4.0%.
Notice how the "other" tax rate plummets for the high income earners? I don't agree with regressive taxes like that, especially when there is such a steep decline in the regressive tax. A $10k salary earner pays 15.3% "other" tax while the $1M salary earner pays 4%. Someone earning $10k salary pays nearly 4 times the tax rate of someone earning $1 million.
Like I said, this "other" tax should in my opinion become all income tax. You still have income tax removed from your paycheck, but nothing else.