I’m an IRS certified tax preparer, please trust me that you’ve got it wrong. There are brackets, but they are (mostly) only applied after all the exemptions, credits and deductions. That’s why you hear about things like “gross income”, “adjusted gross income”, and “modified adjusted gross income”.
The lowest tax bracket is 10%. That bracket is only applied on income from $0 to $11,600. If you make only $12,000 that year, then before that tax bracket is applied, all of your income is already exempted. It’s similar to a tax bracket, but it’s not, because exemptions are different for different filers. And reductions and credits further complicate things. Your adjusted income is often very different than your gross income.
You are literally not required to file taxes if your income falls below this threshold. It would be dumb, because you’d probably get some money if you did file, but all of your income is exempt.
Practically speaking, there’s not much difference between exempt income and a tax bracket of 0%, but the semantics of the statement “every penny is taxed” requires some clarification especially when there’s a portion of your taxes literally called an “exemption”.
This has gone on too long, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about
You just seem like you got mad at them saying everything is taxed but had no way to address it so you resorted to nitpicking when it’s perfectly clear what they are saying
If you do have any clue about taxes then perhaps instead of ranting to me. You could argue to them about expats still paying taxes to the US based on their whole income rather than a portion of it
Like I said, it’s the ridiculousness of claiming “every penny is taxed” when there’s a literal dollar-amount exemption. I’m not addressing his broader point, because the other poster already did. I’m just addressing the “what you said is ridiculous” portion.
A tax at 0% is still a tax, I feel people are purposively missing the point rather than debate them
It’s literally exempt from taxation, that’s why they call it an exemption.
Idk about you but I get it back through tax returns which would suggest it’s not exempt, just 0%
For comparison; Churches are exempt and don’t pay tax then get it refunded
That’s…not how that works
I’m an IRS certified tax preparer, please trust me that you’ve got it wrong. There are brackets, but they are (mostly) only applied after all the exemptions, credits and deductions. That’s why you hear about things like “gross income”, “adjusted gross income”, and “modified adjusted gross income”.
The lowest tax bracket is 10%. That bracket is only applied on income from $0 to $11,600. If you make only $12,000 that year, then before that tax bracket is applied, all of your income is already exempted. It’s similar to a tax bracket, but it’s not, because exemptions are different for different filers. And reductions and credits further complicate things. Your adjusted income is often very different than your gross income.
You are literally not required to file taxes if your income falls below this threshold. It would be dumb, because you’d probably get some money if you did file, but all of your income is exempt.
Practically speaking, there’s not much difference between exempt income and a tax bracket of 0%, but the semantics of the statement “every penny is taxed” requires some clarification especially when there’s a portion of your taxes literally called an “exemption”.
This has gone on too long, you don’t seem to know what you’re talking about
You just seem like you got mad at them saying everything is taxed but had no way to address it so you resorted to nitpicking when it’s perfectly clear what they are saying
If you do have any clue about taxes then perhaps instead of ranting to me. You could argue to them about expats still paying taxes to the US based on their whole income rather than a portion of it
Like I said, it’s the ridiculousness of claiming “every penny is taxed” when there’s a literal dollar-amount exemption. I’m not addressing his broader point, because the other poster already did. I’m just addressing the “what you said is ridiculous” portion.