The Alternative Minimum Tax...

[Al B. Sure!]

I made less income last year than the excess KH has to pay due to AMT. Interdasting.

[Barnabas]

Would you have had to pay for it if it had been adjusted to the inflation rate? It is crazy to keep a tax unchanged since the 70s

[Dinner]

just cost me 12000 dollars. Awesome.

I still qualify for the 26% AMT, I bet you have to pay the the 28% "high" bracket.

[regexcellent]

Niener niener I make less money so don't have to pay as high taxes as you.

[giblets]

I made less income last year than the excess KH has to pay due to AMT. Interdasting.

Why is it interesting that you have no money?

[The Mad Monk]

Not interesting, interdasting. Pay attanshun!

[KrazyHorse]

Other interesting facts:

1) My marginal tax rate is 52.9%
2) My marriage penalty is 4.7% of my AGI (if we had lived together, each earned the same amount of money as we did, but simply not have been married, then we would have 4.7% more of our AGI after taxes)

a) at a marginal tax rate of 52.9%, what is the likelihood that the US will lose the labor of a productive medical physicist when we have a child?
b) given the penalty of 4.7% of AGI, I am now seriously considering getting divorced for tax purposes. Is this some kind of perverse social engineering?

[Dinner]

What was your average tax rate after deductions? No one cares about marginal rates.

[KrazyHorse]

You're a ****ing moron. Marginal rates are where the incentive to produce more comes from.

Leave it to a mindless ****ing lefty partisan like yourself to claim that "nobody cares about marginal rates". I guess that's consistent with the apparent view that incentives don't matter.

My effective tax rate is between 35 and 36%, using my medicare wage base (which includes 401k contributions, unlike AGI) as the denominator and including my half of FICA taxes in the numerator.

[DaShi]

Seems fine to me.

[Dinner]

Marginal tax rates are a big meh. Effective/average tax rates are far more important especially since the tax code has a million and one ways to lower your marginal rate so stop whining.

[KrazyHorse]

a) I have no problem with paying 35% of my earnings in taxes.
b) I have a problem with most of the US (including the middle class, broadly defined) paying very little in taxes, leading to enormous budget deficits
c) I have a problem with an idiotic tax system that can't manage to collect 35% without applying marginal rates of 53%. So should you, because I'm very serious about the chances of this leading to the withdrawal from the labor force of my wife.
d) I have a problem with the government sticking its nose into my marriage and encouraging me to get divorced

[KrazyHorse]

Marginal tax rates are a big meh. Effective/average tax rates are far more important especially since the tax code has a million and one ways to lower your marginal rate so stop whining.

I'm not sure you even know what the terms you're using mean, you ****ing idiot.

[Dinner]

Get some more deductions; my suggestion is to buy a house and have the wife pop out a few ankle biters. Then you can take advantage of that morgage interest deduction you hate so much.

[KrazyHorse]

Wow, you ******, it's almost as though you don't know that the AMT disallows all of the deductions you're referring to.