Oic, weird, in Oz we just have a 0% tax rate for everything under 20k(ish)AUD, seems like a lot of extra steps to have tax rates listed for inconsequential amounts and then make people claim a deduction for those. Does the standard deduction apply to everyone or is it just if you earn less than the fixed amount? Because the latter would then penalise people for earning slightly more than the fixed amount which seems unfair …
I don’t feel like I have a strong answer to that, other than there is a standard deduction applied to all federal tax returns. I suppose this would effectively give you the “tax free” bracket?
Yeah that seems likely given how the US does everything else, make that shit as complicated as possible so someone can fleece someone else and maybe leave some loopholes that someone in the know can exploit …
Wait, do Americans not have a tax free threshold?
Yep. It’s called the standard deduction. If you make less than that, you pay zero income tax.
Oic, weird, in Oz we just have a 0% tax rate for everything under 20k(ish)AUD, seems like a lot of extra steps to have tax rates listed for inconsequential amounts and then make people claim a deduction for those. Does the standard deduction apply to everyone or is it just if you earn less than the fixed amount? Because the latter would then penalise people for earning slightly more than the fixed amount which seems unfair …
I don’t feel like I have a strong answer to that, other than there is a standard deduction applied to all federal tax returns. I suppose this would effectively give you the “tax free” bracket?
Yeah that sort of makes sense, seems like a lot of extra steps for no reason …
I think the “no reason” might be TurboTax/Intuit/that one tax filing company named after a couple or whatever
Yeah that seems likely given how the US does everything else, make that shit as complicated as possible so someone can fleece someone else and maybe leave some loopholes that someone in the know can exploit …