redistribution...,
2008-10-27 14:45:17
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how not to hack voting machines...,
2008-10-28 01:31:00
for a $4,800 tax-free annuity, I might consider faking it:
Comparing some hypothetical results at electiontaxes.com I have to say I'm actually kind of shocked at how large the marriage subsidy is. If my SO and I (we're street legal, see) signed some silly little piece of paper in front of a judge, I could pay our entire tax bill (filing jointly) by myself and it would be $2600 less a year than what I pay singly. After including her taxes it would be a total joint subsidy of $4,800.
If you just took that tax break and threw it into some shitty 4% CD IRA that'd be $645,000 after 40 years. Not an insignificant benefit, and for some reason this kind of tax privilege is unavailable to gay couples. It also happens to be unavailable to me because my pesky SO thinks of marriage as something more than a government subsidy for signing some silly little piece of paper in front of a judge. I don't understand that part, but neither do I understand why anybody should get this kind of significant tax break for no conceivable reason. What possible social benefit is there to subsidizing childless heterosexual married couples, as compared to, say childless cohabitation of any kind?
Also, by the Tax Policy Center's numbers neither candidate actually offers me any tax breaks at all. What is strange about this, to me, is that they both offer nearly $4,000 to those like me who are earning more than double what I make. I guess that means I'm not middle class enough. Or it has something to do with the AMT.