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Comment by drewcrawford | Hacker News Reader

The question is not "Can they afford a tax hike?" The question is, "Will they continue to gross $250,000 and take home less of it, or will they find a lower-stressed job and make less?"

The answer is probably the latter, for a lot of folks.

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Uh. No. The answer is the former, for the absolutely overwhelming and unspeakably vast majority of them. And for the rest, there are a dozen equally qualified people ready to do that job for them.

So you're saying that a person intelligent enough to make $250k per year wouldn't sit down and re-evaluate their job choice when they get an (effective) pay cut?

Really? That doesn't make any sense to me. "Oh my, I'm making marginally less take-home money. I should completely change my career and get even less money!"

Remember it's a marginal tax system. They would only get taxed more on the amount they are making over 250k.

No matter what the tax rate goes to, you'll still be bringing home more money by having a higher paying job.

> Will people create wealth if they can't get paid for it? Only if it's fun. People will write operating systems for free. But they won't install them, or take support calls, or train customers to use them. And at least 90% of the work that even the highest tech companies do is of this second, unedifying kind.

http://paulgraham.com/gap.html

This would make sense if income level actually truly scaled with job difficulty or discomfort. Even if they doubled my taxes, I wouldn't quit my job to go work some minimum-wage drudgery. Higher salary ends up also meaning your job is actually more comfortable. The kind of bullshit people have to put up with in their $7/hr jobs is amazing to me sometimes.

Or they might mask their income, or elect to receive it in other forms like stock options. I think capital gains get taxed at 15%, soon to be reverted to 20% (still less than 39%).

I'm right there on that line. Honestly I pay a TON of taxes already. Very high rate, lots of taxable income. Cutting back to be under 250k would probably make more sense than making 255k and paying a lot more in taxes.

I don't mind taxes and social programs. I do mind paying for unending wars in the Middle East (not making a political statement, just a budgetary one). Cut some of the crazy expenses, and I'll be happier paying my taxes, and you probably won't even have to jack them up.

> Cutting back to be under 250k would probably make more sense than making 255k and paying a lot more

What kind of job do you have that makes >$250K and doesn't require you to understand how income taxes work? I'm skeptical.

My bad. I was confused. Actually I have my companies accountants handle all the taxes, so I don't have to keep much awareness of how income taxes work. I probably should, but I don't need to, since I pay them to do it:)

Seriously man, that's not how taxes work at all. You can't take home more by making less. 255k will have more take home than 250k even if the marginal tax rate was 99%.

If you make $255K, you only get a higher tax rate on the extra $5K. You'll still have more money than someone making $249K. No matter how you slice it, more money = more money. The gov't just will tax you a bit extra on the 5K.

That makes sense, sorry, I wasn't keeping in mind the progressive bracket system:(

If you make nearly $250k and do not understand even the basic progressive income tax system in this country, then I just don't know where to begin...

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