Saturday, April 16, 2011

Taxes and the breadwinner family

It's a good occasion to make a comment about income taxes. I spend much of my time fretting over the state and direction of the country, but I should focus on the bright side: I paid roughly negative $2000 to the federal government this year. And I didn't even have mortgage interest to deduct. How did I do it? By having four children and a wife who doesn't work outside the home. The government paid me! What a sweet deal. What a country. My thanks to all the childless rich people who make this possible. The status quo feels so good, maybe I'm going to have to vote for Obama in 2012.
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5 comments:

  1. frost12:27 PM

    Did the government really pay you $2000 or did you just get a refund of the money that you had overpaid the government? If the latter, then you made an interest free loan to the government.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ron Guhname5:17 PM

    They returned $2000 more than I paid last year.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jehu6:49 PM

    There's a $1000 per child tax credit in the extended Bush tax cuts---that's probably where this came from. BTW, this credit has a really sinister 'knuckle' phaseout for someone with 4 kids---it phases out over the space of 20K in AGI if I recall, which is an additional marginal tax of 5% per child. I bet Ron tithes also and lives in a state with an income tax.

    ReplyDelete
  4. John Roberson8:47 AM

    You're welcome. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Steve N1:10 PM

    Ha, Ron. I've got you beat. I make low 6 figures, and paid about negative $5000 this past year. (About $500 withheld, about $5500 coming back.) To do that, I required 8 children, a $200k mortgage, and substantial (about 10% AGI) charitable contributions. But, yeah!. Thanks, rich people!!

    ReplyDelete

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