You do not understand how taxes work

 Someone recently told me that “going up tax brackets moving from making $60k to $80k was unfair,” citing the old falsehood that brackets penalize success.  For 2022, $60k and $80k are both in the same bracket — so I knew this was someone who never grappled with how brackets work, and just felt shocked at the applied percentages.

They even went so far as to say they would be fine with people making less than $40k paying one rate, and everyone else paying a “regular” rate.  My coffee nearly came out my nose.

My response is copy-pasted below  

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If you go from $60 to 80 you are paying roughly the same amount whether it’s a flat tax or steps. 

Let’s use actual numbers. 

………….

Person one makes $25k, two makes $60k, and 3 makes $80k. 

They all pay 10% of their first $10,275. 

They all pay 12% on what they make from 10,276 up to $41,775.

Then they all pay 22% on what they made from $41776-$89075

…………..

Meaning that One pays $1027 in bracket 1 (like the rest) and $1767 on the money in bracket 2, or $2794 total. 

Two pays the same $1027, maxes out bracket 2 for $1767 in taxes, and pays $4010 out of bracket 3 for a total of $8817. 

Three pays the $1027, the $3780, and the remainder is all (like Two) in bracket 3… but more because they make $20k more. So it’s $8409 in that bracket for a total of $13,216 — around $4k more on the additional $20k because the bracket is taxed at 22%. 

……..

In 2011, Mitt Romney paid 11% in taxes due to loopholes, capital gains, and the like. And he paid substantially lower a percentage (as all making over $147k do, since they pay zero over that). 

Obama paid about 20%. 

If we use that second number (because the first would be ridiculous and deficit-spend us into the ground) as a single bracket…

One pays $5000 in taxes — double their rate, and cutting into their ability to afford basics. 

Two pays $7800, saving $1000 overall. 

Three pays $10,400. Over $5k in savings. 

This means that the poor pay more of what they don’t have so the wealthy can pay less. That’s wealth redistribution— just upward, but to those who need it. 

Millionaires would likely still pay 13%, because of loopholes, capital gains, and the like.  And since nobody pays more than $147k’s worth into SocSec, their overall rate including all taxes is far lower than as compared to most everyone else.

……….

If the rates were set in two tax brackets, the poor would still pay more than they do — because 10% up to $40k is too low for the higher end, and would need too steep a jump at the top. So what would the two rates be? We will come back to this.

At $80k, your rate is still so close to the bottom of the “wealthy” tier that you would get hosed. Current top bracket rate is 37% over $539k. If you want two brackets, the $40k earners will be in with the $80k earners and it would be higher than 22%. If we used the median of brackets as the cutoff, in addition to the poor paying much more of the money for necessities into taxes and the wealthy paying less, the middle class would pay more. We would all pay 24% for making below $270k. An $80k earner would pay $19,200 in taxes, $6k MORE. 

And, if we use the changing of rates instead of taxing brackets individually, that old falsehood of “jumping brackets made me pay more” would be real, and people making $270,001 would get hammered.

Like I said. You do not understand how brackets work.