Hacker News Reader

Comment by freditup | Hacker News Reader

First, this article would've been much better off using medians instead of means. High earner outliers tend to skew stats like these.

Second, it's interesting to see people who were in favor of tax increases suddenly change their mind when it hits them. While I agree that tax cuts for the rich seem unnecessary, some tax hikes for the upper middle-class aren't out of line compared with a Democrat led tax plan. I wonder how much our own personal interests in our money affects how we view tax plans? Most people, no matter how rich they are, seem to want those just richer than them to be taxed more.

Finally, although the removal of the SALT deduction will cost me significantly, I'm not sure I understand how the deduction makes sense. Why should a state raising their taxes mean you have less of a federal obligation? It only makes sense to me if states with higher taxes use less federal resources.

View on HN

A tax rise to ensure that the poor do not go hungry or that social security and medicare are funded is one thing. A tax rise designed solely to fund a lowering of the corporate tax rate and targeted at blue states? An entirely different thing.

"It only makes sense to me of states with higher taxes use less federal resources." Which is entirely the case.

> Second, it's interesting to see people who were in favor of tax increases suddenly change their mind when it hits them.

I'm very much in favor of increasing taxes, if that tax increase went to taking care of some societal problem (I don't care what it is, so for the sake of argument, let's just stipulate that it's a problem we both agree needs funding to solve). In this case, anyone paying more in taxes is just subsidizing those who are seeing a cut. It's more of a shift, given that it's projected to increase the federal debt by quite a bit. I'd be okay with that if we were actually putting more spending money in the pockets of the lower and middle classes, but I'm not sure that's the case. If this is really about cutting taxes across the board, I'm okay with that too, but we need to cut spending and I'd like us to take a look at the defense budget before going after social programs.

> Finally, although the removal of the SALT deduction will cost me significantly, I'm not sure I understand how the deduction makes sense. Why should a state raising their taxes mean you have less of a federal obligation? It only makes sense to me if states with higher taxes use less federal resources.

Deducting SALT makes sense in order to avoid double taxation. To me, it makes sense to pay the local govt first, then the state, then the fed, in that order. In theory, they will provide services to us in that order.

Mortgage interest and property tax deductions don't make sense to me, though. I don't really see why I should be able to deduct these, but my hypothetical tenant can't deduct their rent. None of this should have been deductible in the first place.

Thanks for the response - I think your thoughts on tax increases are quite reasonable. I agree that it's much harder to swallow a tax increase when it seems as if the money is going towards causes you disagree with, and I also feel that way with this tax bill personally.

Not sure if I understand the double taxation argument though. Say local/state/federal tax is 1%/5%/20%. Without the SALT deduction of any form, you get taxed 26% on each dollar which seems intuitive and fair. I think this model makes more sense than exempting certain amounts of money from each subsequent tax-level, but discounting the actual economic implications, I suppose which model seems more intuitive is somewhat subjective.

> Not sure if I understand the double taxation argument though. Say local/state/federal tax is 1%/5%/20%. Without the SALT deduction of any form, you get taxed 26% on each dollar which seems intuitive and fair.

It does seem intuitive and fair, but I could (to myself at least) conclude it's intuitive and fair to not tax the money I use to pay taxes to someone else. To me, it's more that the taxes just keep coming - after those income taxes, I'll pay sales tax, property tax, etc.

I will say that part of my argument is probably a little irrational, and that stems from the fact that I don't agree with how my taxes get spent at the federal level. For what my town takes in property taxes, I feel they do a great job - the roads are in nice shape, the snow is cleared before my morning commute, services are timely, etc. The state does a pretty good job, even if we do pay one of the highest state income tax rates in the US and have a ridiculously bad governor (Maine), and I agree with a lot of where it's going even if we've needed the ballot box to do some of these things (like expand Medicare). My disagreements at the state level to what we're not spending money on, but that's a slightly classier problem than not liking where the money does go. The federal government, by contrast, seems to light a good portion of our money on fire, and then borrows some more and lights that on fire too.

>>Second, it's interesting to see people who were in favor of tax increases suddenly change their mind when it hits them.

Deep down humans just optimize for personal profit.

Which is why one must always see themselves as temporarily embarrassed millionaires and not exploited proletariat.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com