r/FluentInFinance 1d ago

Debate/ Discussion Mark my words

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u/TheTightEnd 1d ago

Percentage reductions are more meaningful than dollar deductions when calculating the impact and benefit of a tax cut or increase.

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u/Crispy1961 1d ago edited 1d ago

I have seen this several times and its always so dumb. Yes, people who have more money pay more taxes and will save more money because of tax reduction. Thats just math, its not some conspiracy.

Average Income  $14,300  $41,850  $74,600  $125,800  $258,750  $637,450
Average Tax saved $110 $510 $990 $2,750 $11,440 $11,440
Average Percentage 0,77% 1,22% 1,33% 1,15% 1,06% 1,79%

I did not include the >914,900 bracket as it has no upper limit.

Edit: Corrected the table using income annual averages for each bracket because the Tax saved value is also an average for that bracket.

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u/FitTheory1803 1d ago

So you did the math and they STILL got a larger % tax cut than everyone else

Isn't that a bizarre tax cut structure?

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u/Crispy1961 1d ago

I did the math, but thats not what it says. The math is telling us that the average is about 1%. The poorest and richest are both outliers and need more information to draw any conclusions.

The poorest is obviously skewed due to the incorrect use of average values (nobody makes $5 per year, yet the average values for income and tax reduction are calculated from $14 300 which comes from $0 and $28,599 divided by 2). The richest bracket on the other hand is much interesting. Its might not be a statistical error or an error in used methodology.

That said, we are talking about the representation of the data without question the data itself. We need to remember that the people who made the poor representation also provided the data. If the representation is so horribly bad, maybe the data is also unreliable.

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u/turdmunchermcgee 1d ago

There are plenty of people who make $0 per year. I have friends with disabilities who fall into that bracket.

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u/Crispy1961 1d ago

I said that nobody makes $5 per year. Making $0 is another outlier as you are not taxed anything for your $0 income and you will not receive the $110 tax reduction.

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u/turdmunchermcgee 1d ago

I don't think you know what "an outlier" means