Among middle-class suburbanite whites there is really nothing to be concerned about except taxes. You’re not being shot by police, you’re not getting an abortion, you’re not concerned about inner-city schools, you’re not using mass transit, your kid is not in the military, etc.

Worse comes to worse AOC/Bernie have shown that progressive stances ARE POPULAR. Before Bernie came no one was seriously fighting for M4A, now it is a non-starter if you fail to support it. Plus technocrats get boners over polling - they see how popular higher taxes on the wealthy are across the political spectrum.

Out here in California a fair amount has changed for the worse with regard to my taxes and those around me. I have not filed yet for 2018 but I know when all is said and done I will have paid a ton more tax for 2018 than for 2017 (due to a variety of factors).

I work with actors, and if they file as individuals (are not incorporated) they can no longer deduct commissions paid to me from their income as a business expense. They literally never see/get that money and still have to pay income tax on it. Of course they can incorporate, but my understanding is that won't help unless they make over $75K or something like that (I am not a tax professional). Most actors make less than that.

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/02/tru...gops-tax-plan/

Womp womp

Yeah my brother and SIL are writers/actors and they started a corporation for tax purposes because they get hosed otherwise. Guess they making that good money out there (I actually don’t think they make that much but more than 75K seems reasonable since he’s a full time television writer and has worked on several shows that have gone to Netflix).

This is actually the one year my taxes should be good because my wife and I were on one salary for most of the year taking care of our new baby. The two previous years we’ve owed a **** ton but like we understand that is the price for making decent money is this country; would just be nice if the wealthy actually had to pay.

Actors must get paid W-2s instead of 1099s and commissions to an agent would be unreimbursed business expenses which are now limited to 2% of income? That must really be screwing some people.

my income varies from year to year, so hard to compare exactly. but i'm pretty sure my taxes will be higher than they would have been if i had the same income last year since i pay a lot of state and local tax.

In my experience, some blue collar contractors will literally try to expense everything, meals/clothes/hotels/any sort of major purchase, whether it has anything to do with work or not. I'm also pretty sure that they weren't technically allowed to do that in years past, much less this year.

That is correct, and yes it is. And it mostly bones what one might call the "middle class" actor making say $35K - $75K, although the life that pays for in LA is pretty lean, especially at the lower end, and at the upper end if there are kids involved.

But lord knows nobody's going to weep for the actors.

Just occurred to me that entertainment accountants probably are having good years because of all the people who now need professional help figuring this out.

So are you saying it is a max of 2% of gross income? So our hypothetical trucker's gross income would have to be $1.5M for him to not be able to write off the $30k?

My biggest problem with US taxes in general, and any changes like TCJA is everything is so complicated. The more money and intelligence you have the easier it is to lower your tax obligation. Actors making 50k a year shouldn't need an accountant.

I am amused thinking about the GOP turds who thought awval’s $12.75 per paycheck was going to be a huge political win, especially in light of the rubes’ eventual realization it was all just a cash advance on their (now non existent) refund.

He could deduct up to 2% of his income as unreimbursed expenses.

If a trucker is technically a W2 employee who makes 100k a year, he could only deduct 2k or less in expenses.

If he is a 1099 Contractor he would have no limit on deductions. Its the same thing that screws actors who get W2s but have a lot of expenses like agent fees ect.

This one my favorite by far:

its not complicated. esp for the 50k grunts. theres also no way to lower their taxes no matter how smart you are.

the problem is that the middle class and poor have to pay a ****ton of taxes relative to their earnings.

[x] baby's ITT

An actor or truck driver who needed to incorporate at the start of 2018 in order to keep taking business deductions they have every other year seems overly complicated to me.

I do agree that for most salaried people who are making low to middle class incomes, things aren't too complicated, and doubling the standard deduction prob made things a lot simpler for a lot of them.

I also agree that the poor and lower middle class are paying too much in tax, especially those who are self employed.

If the public fully understood just how little tax actual rich people pay, it would be pitchfork time. The left has done an ATROCIOUS job on this issue.

But company truckers can't just decide to reclassify as self-employed, at least not legally. There's been a crackdown on this recently as misclassification (by employers) was one of the great scams going. There were--and surely still are--many "independent contractor" drivers who owned zero trucks or equipment and drove one route for one company but with no benefits and an additional SE tax burden.

Makes me think our mystery trucker was perhaps just recently and properly reclassified as an employee or was never a contractor at all. That specific amount of deductions he's claiming looks an awful lot like a per diem for a year-round OTR trucker.

Oh, you mean the JOB CREATORS? We should be paying them!

The public barely understands taxes in general, leading to dopes saying things like "I turned that raise down so I wouldn't get bumped into a higher bracket" and the "baby's" tweet above advocating for a flat tax.

I think focusing on how much money rich people are left with instead of how much they "lose" to taxes would help sharpen the pitchforks.

I don't know, I think there is some value in pointing out that Trump is increasing the taxes of Trump supporters because he needs the money to pay for tax cuts to the super rich. Trump keeps selling the fantasy that he's helping the little guy but right now the little guy is looking at his tax bill and saying WTF.

Do people really think Trump is actually going to read their tweets and do something when they @ him? It's like they're praying to a patron saint or something.

The provisions that specifically benefit the ultra rich (changes to Corp rate mainly) were proposed by Democrats under Obama too. They were necessary to bring the US back in line with rest of the world.

Just about everyone I know that’s in top 1% (and most of top 10%) but not 0.01% is getting shafted.

FWIW Chiefsplanet is completely convinced that all their taxes went way way down, billionaires didn't get a big tax cut, and libtards are just spreading fake news again.

This is of course misleading at best, to the extent Obama was willing to bring down corporate taxes he wanted to pair it with loophole and deduction eliminations to make it revenue neutral.

You're "the people I know" thing belies the quality of this post.