In the spirit of Tax Freedom Day in the US, this weekend, I present IRS Form QF.
Enjoy!
Favorite part
phillup on 2005-04-19T20:41:01
My favorite part of the page:
On one hand this criticism is largely irrelevant...
As is any discussion about taxes that does not consider outflows.
I'd
really love to live in a fantasy world where I never had to consider my debts.
As if the entire point of taxes was... um... taxes.
Maybe we should take their data, and data on yearly budgets, and come up with a "responsibility index".
See which party likes to shirk their bill paying responsibility the most... might be interesting.
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It also seems a bit stupid to focus on tax rates. I'm much more interested in having money to spend.
So... download the pdf report and go to page 12 to do some calculations.
If I lived in the state with the "highest tax burden", I'd have $39,571 after paying my federal taxes. But if I lived in the state with the "lowest tax burden" I'd have $22,910 after paying federal taxes.
Hmm... I wonder if there might be some correlation that is not being considered? Surely not.
Maybe that is an anomoly... as the extremes tend to be. So, I used to live in Colorado, now I live in Idaho. How do those two stack up?
Colorado ranks 9 while Idaho ranks 47. (Probably still close to the edges, but this one has more meaning for me personally. You can do your own calculations
;-))
If I lived in Colorado I'd have $31,617 vs $25,109 after paying taxes.
Still not looking good for the "tax burden" guys.
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What I really know after looking at this is: I sure am glad I'm not "average".
Given the choice to pay more taxes and have more money to spend vs. paying less taxes and have less money to spend... I'll pay more taxes. Thank you very much. (That is a false dichotomy... but it seems to be exactly what the site advocates.)
Re:Favorite part
ziggy on 2005-04-19T21:08:48
Dude, what does any of this have to do with IRS Form QF?
Focus on the punchline, not the lead-in. ;-)
Re:Favorite part
phillup on 2005-04-19T21:27:14
Sorry, my bad.
The form was awesome. I especially liked the worksheet.
