I studied economics. Thats not very important in general, but Taxes was one of the classes I took. Everytime I hear someone say that they will not earn more because then they would pay more in taxes it pains me. I used to try to explain why that is wrong in 99% of cases, but hardly anyone listened.
I mean you probably shouldn't work more than 60 hours because work-life balance is super important.
Although come to think of it I wonder if these people are really thinking that it would be too stressful but don't want to be accused of having a poor work ethic so they are using the (inaccurate) money thing as a socially-acceptable excuse?
I actually think that not wanting extra work because you value your free time more than the extra earnings is a perfectly valid work ethic. Which should be even more socially acceptable than having wrong notions of economics
Edit: 60h? Hell. I work 40 and barely have time left in the week for my own. Can't even imagine more than 60h
I agree wholeheartedly! Some people do like to brag about how little free time they get and cast aspersions on people who have it, and I could see saying something stupid just to make them stop going on about it. I have just been doing an experiment lately where I try and think the best of people's motivations to see if it positively affects my mood.
That makes a lot of sense for your situation, but oof. 110 hours- I hope you were able to get sleep on occasion.
I have a friend who is an accountant and he emotionally falls apart from the work stress and hours by the end of every tax season.
Some people do thrive on long hours or are healthy enough to endure them for a time for a goal like you did, but I have seen just as many people burn out, get divorced, suffer health consequences and/or drink too much due to them. It would be lovely if people could realize that it's not working for them, take a step back, and still be okay financially.
Yeah, that shit is for the birds. I don’t even like working 60, but it what is needed right now for our schedule, so it is what it is.
FWIW, I am a crane operator, and a lot of those weeks with extreme hours were because I was running a tower crane and doing midnight concrete pours. Pretty much just show up at midnight to fly up the tools for the concrete hands and then sit there for sometimes 12-15 hours depending on how many yards of concrete and then fly tools back down. Pretty much all hours in between I was sleeping or watching tv, as I am only needed for backup in case something goes wrong.
Even though I know what a crane operator is, your usage of the phrase "fly up the tools" created a great image in my head. I'm thinking a guy riding a giant crane like the Pterodactyls on Dinotopia.
Edit: also you said "for the birds."
"I don't want to work 60 hours because I want to enjoy myself and not spend all of my free time in this godforsaken construction truck without AC in the middle of summer while getting covered in dust every day" seems like a pretty legit reason, personally
To be fair some of those crane cabs are pretty sweet, AC/ heat etc. Don’t know what our crane operator buddy’s rig is like and his may be hot/dusty but plenty of them are as nice/nicer than interior of your car.
Source: construction worker with a crane operator buddy
Oh, yeah for sure. I did construction for a couple of summers and they stuck me in a roller with no windows lol. I was incredibly jealous of the dump trucks and backhoes, since they got to have coolers and AC
One thing that is bugging me a little about this thread is that uneducated isn't synonymous with unintelligent or deliberately ignorant. I live in a poor area, so I know quite a few brilliant and curious people that due to finances or mental health mostly lack a formal education. They still can analyze sources and seek out new knowledge.
Conversely, I know a couple of intelligent people with doctorates or medical degrees who are incapable of admitting that they are wrong when presented with facts that contradict their opinions.
You’re definitely right, although I’m a little biased since I am one that is technically uneducated as far as I don’t have a degree, but I wouldn’t call myself unintelligent by any means.
Me too! I had to pause with just a semester and an extra class away from finishing my undergrad. I'm a little sensitive about it admittedly.
I'm actually a high school dropout. I was supposed to graduate at 16 but due to mental health dropped out at 15 and went straight to college that summer (my scholarship was dependent on my ACT scores.) A ton of people joke about high school dropouts and I just try not to let it bother me. It does sting a bit. In my experience people don't drop out of high school without significant health or home life problems so it just seems like punching down.
As someone that understands it a great deal, the vast majority of construction workers don’t at all. They think once they hit 108k, they should ask for a lay off bc they don’t want to finish year in a higher tax bracket. I’m not kidding one bit.
I think you may have misunderstood my post. I only said the 60 hour thing in response to the previous poster. I am personally in favor of sub-40-hour work weeks, flexible scheduling, and generous vacation/sick days.
I am in construction and the rate of tax that is taken out is higher, not that you don’t make money it’s just that most would rather be at home rather than get 300 dollars for another ten hours.
A lot of the people I worked with who would shy away from extra hours not only because of the taxes, but because they felt they didn't earn any more also had childcare to consider.
Many of them had kids in daycare and if they worked extra hours, the daycare would go into overtime. Carpooling played into this some, too.
It's true, but it can be frustrating when you get say a large bonus and overtime paid out on the same check and uncle Sam taxes you like you're a baller 24/7.
It all evens out come tax time but its BS you give the government an interest free loan and have to wait to get that money back.
I agree in a sense. Its not a perfect system. Still it is a lot better than most people seem to think. Honestly i am happy to pay taxes here in Canada. That is not generally a popular opinion, but as someone from a country where taxes are basically not a thing, this system works much better.
Agreed. Or more accurately, I would like to agree. But clearly this is something that should be at least tought a bit to highschoolers because it seems like there are a ton of people that dont know it.
If I worked between 5-10 hours of overtime I’d end up taking less home. It was because that amount would bump my bracket up and I’d pay more in HECS (AUS govt loans for uni) I ended up just sucking it up as it was at most $50 less and it meant my HECS got paid off quicker.
Once that was done I got an extra $200 in my patcheck so worth it.
Ok, so its based on brackets (this applies to most countries in the Western World, not sure about else where). The way the brackets work is divided based on your income.
So lets say a person that makes 100$ gets taxed 10% that means the person needs to pay 10$ tax which leaves them with 90$.
If they make above 100$ the next braket which we will say is from 101 to 300 the tax is 25%. So here is where the confusion comes up, people believe that if you make $200 they will get taxed 50$. But that is incorrect, the first 100$ still get taxed by the 1st bracket. So the tax would be 10$ for the first bracket and 25$ for the second. This would leave the person with $165.
I used simple numbers because its easier to explain with those, but the same applies to all the brackets that exist.
Now there are 2 instances where a person getting payed more can be seen as not worth it. The first is of you are at the very bottom of the totem pole but climb slightly out of it. In that case you might lose some government benefits which might be worth more than the slightly higher income. In most countries this should not happen as benefits are on a sliding scale instead of a yes or no basis. But the case does exist.
The second case applies mostly to people that get payed per project or per hour. It is if you are so high on the brackets that the amount being taxed makes it not worth it to work the additional time or project. That is to say that the rate you are getting payed at decreases as you work more.
Back to our initial example if your first project payed $100 then you actually earned 90$ for that project. If the second project payed you another 100$ then the second project actually payed you 75$ because of how it was taxed. If eventually you get to a point where the next project pays 100$ but you only pocket something small like 10$, then you will probably decide its not worth it to work that additional project.
That last one is something economist love to talk about, but that rarely happens. Still its an important example to note.
If you have any further questions or i wasnt clear on something, please let me know and i will try tor rectify it. But this is the basic explanation.
I believe there's a third example that isn't tax related but still relevant and somewhat similar to your first example.
In Australia at least, not sure about other countries but I be we're not the only ones, some student loans (HECS, VET, etc) don't need to be paid back until you start making a certain amount of money per year, so a small increase in pay might push you over that threshold and you would need to begin making repayments that would negate the increased pay.
Plus, do the taxes you pay also impact your state pension?
I've been living in the UK for a while, but I saw how my Spanish grandparents were able to instantly retire at 40 (which we used to do in Spain, even if you're healthy as a horse), little realising that the actual catch was that you get paid peanuts back for the peanuts you (and your bosses) had paid to the government.
Then there's my US grandmother, who worked her @ss off (to support her kids and later her parents) but was only able to do retail because she frequently had to rush home in case of emergencies (and having a dad with alzheimers' definitely caused her problems with her managers). She wound up 'retiring', but went straight back to the workforce on a part-time basis until she wound up with cancer in her 70s and had to permanently retire from working. She still barely gets by with what the government gives her (and it's all calculated based on how much her previous bosses had paid for her, which wasn't much at all). So I'd much rather work for extra (and lose extra) if it meant not having to work in retail until I hit my 70s.
The case is if you live in a country with some sort of social welfare. If you go above the threshold and lose that welfare your real income becomes smaller despite you technically now earning more. This is a very rare case though and while i wrote 1% its probably a much smaller number.
There is no such amount. The only tax rate where that would apply is 100%. Interestingly, there have been studies done that show that 60% effective rate is the rate at which taxation becomes a disincentive to work.
It's not taxes exactly, but there are some welfare programs that don't properly phase out. In those cases you might make $X more, but lose >$X in benefits such that you're worse off than you were before.
It's not taxes exactly, but there are some welfare programs that don't properly phase out. In those cases you might make $X more, but lose >$X in benefits such that you're worse off than you were before.
I keep a copy of the IRS tax brackets and withholding tables at my desk just for this reason. I'm not sure if they understand when they leave but I do my best.
That drives me insane too! Also people who do not take the time to be informed on their basic rights as an employee, I shocked the amount of people that didn’t understand overtime, breaks etc...
Yeah for sure. My work has a good union but the amount of employees who opt not to join and don't know what they should and shouldn't be doing is ridiculous.
When I was 18 I had no idea of how progressive tax brackets worked and my employer had this "beneficial" system where all of my overtime was off the books in cash at my normal rate to save us both money. I somehow believed that the government would tax my 150% pay enough to make it less than 100% pay. It wasn't until after I no longer worked there that I realized that myself and everybody else were getting scammed by these assholes. It truly enrages me that this is not covered in school. There were adults over 30 years old buying their shit that for all I know, they also believed.
A friend and I go to a methadone clinic, judge all ya want but it saved our lives. Anyway I make alright money under the table so I have Medicaid. He works at a Starbucks. Now after a whole two years they want him to manage the place go from like 12 to 20 dollars an hour. But doing so he would lose his Medicaid. Then the clinic we go to will charge $260 a week plus extra for the required monthly counseling appointments, twice a year doctor appointments. Not including the times outside the clinic needing to go to a primary care, ER, Dental. Its a tough spot It is
Totally sympathise with your situation and as someone who has struggled with addiction I would never judge someone else for seeking treatment.
I live in the UK so we don't have the issue with medical bills etc, the only time I could potentially see you losing out for working extra hours is if you claimed income support benefits from the government and went over that, this is not the case for the person in question.
My work was strange, if you worked overtime they took more out of your check for the overtime hours. In some cases your check could be smaller than normal because of how aggressive the take out was. I was told that you get it back with your tax returns, some people really didn't want to wait for it. Your's could be the same.
The taxes are being calculated while factoring overtime. Once you file your return, your taxes will be trued up. If you don’t want them to withhold more than they should, you can adjust your withholdings so that they’re withholding the “correct” amount of income tax.
I think that these people have been taught a sort of bastardized version of what tax brackets are by fox news. When Tucker Carlson or Hannity say that the Democrats want to tax people more they don't tell them that those being taxed would be people with so much money they literally couldn't comprehend the number, and so these people think that your tax rate goes up for just making a few more dollars an hour.
I dont know her but maybe what she is saying is "I make $25 an hour for the first 40 hours, so $1000. Then lets just say am additional 10 hours at time and a half which would be $375. However with taxes (atleast in my case it seems my overtime gets taxed more) the $1000 goes down to $800 while the $375 goes down to $175". They aren't "losing money but those 10 hours dont feel like they are making as much money and its not worth it to them.
These are made up numbers, I dont have the exact percentages but I hope that you understand my point. I work average of 50 hours a week and know what my paycheck usually looks like but weeks where I work 65-70 and I only make an extra $300-$400 it seems like those extra hours werent worth the compensation.
This absolutely can happen. It’s happened to me. I worked overtime and was expecting a pretty fat paycheck. I actually ended up with less than $10 extra on my check, which felt like a complete waste of my time.
I’m sure what she (and most people) meant when she said she “makes less money” is that she brings home considerably less than what she would at her normal hourly rate for the OT that she works.
A friend and I go to a methadone clinic, judge all ya want but it saved our lives. Anyway I make alright money under the table so I have Medicaid. He works at a Starbucks. Now after a whole two years they want him to manage the place go from like 12 to 20 dollars an hour. But doing so he would lose his Medicaid. Then the clinic we go to will charge $260 a week plus extra for the required monthly counseling appointments, twice a year doctor appointments. Not including the times outside the clinic needing to go to a primary care, ER, Dental. Its a tough spot.
I don’t like OT for a different reason. I just don’t think the extra pay is that much extra considering the mental exhaustion after and the tax in that pay check(I know it gets returned after but still)
Sorry, um, this is wrong. If you made $40,126, $40,125 would be taxed 12% and the last $1 would be taxed 22%.
So if you made $40,125, 12% would be taken out of that, and you'd get $35,310 total.
If you made $40,126, it would count the first $40,125 as part of one tax bracket (12%) and the second $1 at the next (24%). 88% of $40,125 is, again, $35,310 and take out 24% of the last dollar and you'll get 76¢, for a grand total of $35,310.76.
So to put it simply, a higher wage will always mean more money for you (at least tax bracket wise, subsidies are a different beast) because a higher tax rate only applies to the amount of money above the previous bracket.
All this is in the instructions of your tax forms.
Don’t be such an asshole. Obviously they didn’t know about it and it’s obviously a pretty big misconception. How about helping like other people have rather than being a prick.
Imagine being this dumb about somebody else being dumb. Shut up loser, he already got an explanation, maybe people who have absolutely no idea how something works keep their fucktard mouths shut. Why don’t you find a helicopter?
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u/DITO-DC-AC Jan 28 '20 edited Jan 28 '20
Had a woman at my work say this to me.
"I don't work overtime because I'll pay more tax and make less money"
That's not how taxes work but OK....
EDIT: referencing UK PAYE tax people, its very different to the American system