EU have free healthcare and education. Also not everyone, but alot of people still own their own houses and appartments or they can get relatively cheap mortage.
Nothing of it available in cheap country for expat. If you move to developing country you better pay for health insurance like 80-250 EUR / month / person.
Also if you have a partner who is not remote worker they might not be able to find well paid job there. If you have kids then giving them good modern education in English is exorbitantly expensive.
I wont even start about fact that government of cheap country might change and you lose your residence permit, social circle or even property. And in most of countries that are easy to enter never give permanent residences and passports. You have to pay pay pay all the time or jump countries.
… which is precisely why I mentioned gross, pre-mandatory social contributions, pre-taxed income, and not net take-home? Considering said taxes pay for said healthcare, pensions, and education?
As a supporting point for
> 50,000 sounds like a lot. Most people in West European countries don’t make that much.
And a counter-point to
> I lived across South East Asia for more than decade and now live here full time. I have to live on around $20,000 / year most of the time […] And I do not live anywhere close to what average US / EU citizen will call "comfortable" […]. It only possible if you preserve your US salary. For $50,000 post tax a year you can live well unless you have kids that need not a "poor country education".
> I wont even start about fact that government of cheap country might change and you lose your residence permit, social circle or even property. And in most of countries that are easy to enter never give permanent residences and passports.
Good, because that is an entirely different and very loosely related point.
Honestly conversation did derailed. For me it isnt about US vs EU. Its about difference between living in a country with some functioning institutions, rule of law and education / healthcare.
I do care about having to waste my life setting DIY solutions because country I live in doesnt have it.
I just lived around the world a bit especially in said cheap countries. A lot of people who spend 3-6 months travelling there after college or while nomading seriously undersell how much hassle living there can be if you're there for good.
Its a good to have a job or company in US / EU while living in SEA knowing you can always return if something go sour or when you decide to start a family. Its nowhere as easy if you have hypothetical scenario of moving there for a decade.
They are not free, the costs are deducted from the gross income listed above. Not that fundamentally different than employers paying for your health insurance (besides the system being way more efficient etc.)
Whole point is that as expat in developing countries you'll have to DIY your own healthcare. And education if you have children. And pay commercial prices.
And good education is either non existing in cheap cities or expensive in expensive ones.
> And good education is either non existing in cheap cities or expensive in expensive ones.
As it is in most if not all of the world? Free, high quality, public education is a rare thing, in most countries, even fully developed expensive ones.
Even when the schools themselves are nominally free you see well-off highly educated people do their best and pay a very large premium to get to live into the proper, usually expensive, neighbourhoods so their kids can live in the "right" school district to get into the "right" school.
Which is just paying a premium for supposedly better education. An indirect education cost.
And that is on top of the taxes deducted from the gross salary figures I mentioned, which are, in part, used to cover said "free" education.
To be fair if you are an English speaker and move to medium/lower CoL central/eastern/southern European country you will mostly have the same concerns and will realistically have to pay commercial prices for the most part.
Yes of course someone pays for it, in this case your deductions as you say.
But I think there is a fundemental difference to employers paying for health insurance in that it doesn't depend on your job. So if you lose your job you don't lose your healthcare so companies can't use that as a way to retain you.
And the actual cost of healthcare to the organisations paying for it is actually far lower than the US system, probably partly because it's more regulated and also because there is far less litigation so insuranace for doctors is cheaper.
So I don't think the US system is "more efficient", unless by "efficient" you mean in extracting money from patients / their insurances. In the US hospitals exist to make money, in the EU it's more about providing treatment.
Since I'm an engineer in europe I think I have a clear idea of how little engineers in europe make. And it's not little enough to run away from your life for only 100k$
The question is still what number people need to live "comfortably" (i.e. upper middle class). The average salary there may not quite provide for the amenities the average American considers "comfortable".
For expat most important part of comfort its entertainment and socialization. In cheap areas you will only have locals who depend on country might want or not to socialize with you, but either way cultural gap will be massive and finding friends will be a struggle for most.
There of course cities with a lot of expats and activities, but imagine what - living there is not cheap. Cheaper than US / EU, but you still gonna need that $2000 / month.
Wont even start on topic of lost opportunities from lack of networking since we talk of some extreme downshifting here. But most people need friends and safety net at least.
It can be also a married person tax depending on your circumstances. If both spouses make similar amounts then they are getting taxed more as a married couple, because the bracket threshold for a married couple are less than 2x that for an individual.
I don't understand why everyone is not taxed as an individual, regardless of marital status.
I don't follow. If you encourage both to work, don't you get more total productivity? How does productivity increase by incentivizing one to leave the workforce?
And by encouraging both to work, you'll get more total tax revenue.
> How does productivity increase by incentivizing one to leave the workforce?
Maybe it's a long term strategy? The tax you'll levy on the kid (as the kid and later as adult) is expected to be much more than what you can levy on one partner (during child rearing)?
Taxing as individuals is kind of unfair to single earner households, since the earner has to support more people it seems reasonable to tax them less. You could maybe accomplish a similar thing with deductions but there will still be some weird cases
A couple each home earns x, each gets taxed on x. Each gets the tax free allowance on the fist £12.5k of the annual income. Each gets the full basic rate slice before they hit higher bands etc.
If one of the couple earns 2x and the other zero, then only one can use their tax free allowance and they get one slice of the basic rate band etc.
They still have the same pre-tax income for the same household.
Personally I think people should be allowed to opt in to sharing taxable income.
Why do we need to push people into the workforce? There are a lot of social benefits to people being stay at home parents (which will be the commonest reason for doing so).
What fraud?
> You will then get the argument of "why should I be taxed more because I'm single"?
You might, but its a dishonest argument. You are taxing households together. You are giving each individual the same amount of tax free income and the same amount in the lower bands.
It is already possible for self employed people to do this by making their spouses a partner or shareholder in the business or similar. This is just extending the same rights to employed people.
Why is taxing households together the correct thing, other than the fact it presumably would improve your personal standard of living (it would also improve mine)? What are you trying to encourage? I could see if you want to encourage families having tax benefits based on children - but universal childcare provision seems more likely to succeed.
And as for not seeing how a tax cut based on 2 people living together could not be abused, you must be very short sighted.
> Why is taxing households together the correct thing
Hypothetically if the household splits up due to a divorce its assets are divided 50:50 (this varies by jurisdiction). Usually (again depending on the jurisdiction) the lower-earning spouse also gets alimony to even up the difference in income resulting from the new situation, at least for a few years.
Clearly then the state believes assets owned and income earned by either one of the couple belong equally to both (something I agree with personally: it's called a partnership). If that's the case, how could it be wrong to tax the household as a single entity?
The fundamental question is whether the primary unit of the society is a household or an individual. If you assume that the society consists of individuals, people should be taxed individually, spouses should be allowed to choose in advance how their assets would be divided in a divorce, and alimony should only be paid to support underage children.
I think the currently prevailing view is that a household (or a family) is the smallest social structure and the individual is pretty much the opposite of society.
> Why is taxing households together the correct thing
its fairer
> It presumably would improve your personal standard of living
I am divorced and remain single so it would make no difference to me
> could see if you want to encourage families having tax benefits based on children
I want people to enjoy family life. Its the same reason I want family friendly working hours, decent paternity leave, a right to home educate and better schools etc.
> And as for not seeing how a tax cut based on 2 people living together could not be abused, you must be very short sighted.
And as for not seeing how a tax cut based on 2 people living together could not be abused, you must be very short sighted.
Please do explain . Also please find evidence it is abused where tax does work like that. Its not a cut either as many households would pay the same tax, and its likely rates would go up slightly to make it revenue neutral. Its also more consistent as benefits are based on household income in the UK, as are things like student loans and educational bursaries and the treatment of finances in divorce.
The concept of a household is not nebulous. It is used by economists for a good reason. People in the same household pool income and expenses. The law assumes married couples do so. Parents are jointly responsible for their children.
Really? There are benefits and tax cuts that allow parents to spend more time with their children? Not that I know of.
As a mostly single earner in a community property state, my spouse earns half the income for tax purposes. If you were going to tax individuals, it's probably reasonable to apply income evenly across marriages for all states.
I supported a non-earning spouse for a decade in Canada and it's always been a bit murky. Like in 2014-2015 there was a concept of transferring up to 50k of income to the spouse ("Family Tax Cut"), but Trudeau's Liberal gov't canceled it when they came into power; I think they correctly recognized that it was basically a handout to families privileged enough to be in a position where there was enough spread between the two earners that transferring that sum would be significant.
CRA is even pretty careful about letting a spouse claim capital gains income; it's always attributed back to whoever earned the original principal (outside of inheritance). I think the only way around this is to formally "loan" the spouse their investment money, but you have to charge them interest and the interest is of course income to you.
Tax policy is also used a method of encourage certain types of behavior and discourage others. EV Tax Credits and Solar Tax Credits are example of encouraging starting up industries which we need to assist with climate change in economic powered method.
At a broad level, offering benefits for marriage solves political problem, married people tend to vote so need to be catered to. It also solves societal one, marriage tends to be better at extremely broad strokes for society. Married Couples live longer, commit less crime, kids in married households generally have better outcomes and so forth. So politicians in United States decided to incentive it.
I would prefer that tax disincentives existed in the form of excise taxes on things the government doesn't want consumed. Instead of offering EV tax credits, why not offer 0% tax on EVs and 200% tax on ice? Let's get rid of this nonsense 16A and go back to the correct form of federal taxation: excise and/or apportioned if you need a non consumption based tax.
The threshold rates for a lot of credits, deductions and exemptions are not. Like the Roth IRA is $153k for single, $242k for married. Child care credits have a similar problem if I remember correctly (or they did before my kids grew out of it).
Portland, OR metro gives a $125k threshold to single and only $200k to married filing jointly for supportive housing taxes, which is a 1% tax on income above the threshold.
I have no idea why households that tend to demand less housing (married usually live together) are charged more than singles, who typically demand their own housing at that income level. It makes no sense!
The thought being it's okay to steal from married households because they intentionally set themselves up for lower per partner overhead? Why don't we charge single taxpayers with roommates on the same schedule?
By living in a single house, a married couple demands less housing, which reduces the cost of housing against a fixed supply. Why are we taxing the people making housing cheaper under the guise of "affordable housing"? Shouldn't we treat affordable housing taxes like the carpool lane and reduce the burden of those that are reducing the burden on the constrained supply?
I did a draft of our taxes this week and it was almost exactly the same amount filing married vs separately. Where is the big benefit for filing jointly? I guess if you claim dependents?
MFS vs MFJ is a whole different thing from MFJ vs 2x Single.
While there's numerous places where MFJ < 2x Single due to various marriage penalties, and even more numerous places where 2x Single < MFJ due to the shared tax bracket space below the 37% bracket....
there are very very few places where MFS > MFJ. They exist, but you have to be in particular situations like one person having disproportionately more debt and on an income based repayment plan, or similar.
There are of course many situations where 2x Single = MFJ = MFS if it's just two similar income W2 employees with no edge cases going on.
(Once you're married, filing 2x Single is obviously not an option)
If one spouse makes significant income and the other does not, it can help drop the high-earner into a lower bracket overall. Not a huge boon, but every penny counts in our household.
TIL. All the tax bracket thresholds for married filing jointly are exactly double that of married filing separately, which are the same as single taxpayer, except the threshold for top-most bracket where it switches between 35% and 37%, which is wildly different in favor of single taxpayers. Weird.
A marriage differential is a mathematical consequence of progressive marginal rates and community property (specifically the ability to shift income between spouses).
To put it another way, eliminating the marriage differential[1] in all cases requires giving up progressive marginal rates or community property.
Which one do you want to give up?
[1] The current US brackets and deductions taxes some married couples more than comparable pairs of individuals, taxes some less, and is basically a wash in other cases. It's easy to move couples between the first two groups and you can move some of each to the third, you can't move all of them.
What is very strange is that some states let you file jointly to save money on federal income taxes, but file separately for state income taxes and others do not.
The lottery has been around since way before 2020, I believe.
You do get preferential assignment to one school close to you. Most schools can take in all the kids that have this neighborhood preference but I believe there are a couple that don’t. (This is for Kindergarten, TK is more of a mess).
Résumé/CV: Strategy & Ops person. Experience in management consulting, then large tech companies (Adobe, Cisco) in Strategy or Sales Strategy & Ops role. Looking for Business Operations role in smaller company, ideally based in SF.
I think French people would do 4 with just the pinkie down. At least this specific French person does :). In my case that means the ring finger is not perfectly up, but still enough that it's clear it's raised.
Well, it happened to all of us for months for the past several months: in many places, people were prevented from "living their normal lives": in San Francisco, you could no longer get your hair cut, go to a restaurant, or worse, have family or friends over etc. Now, we are saying instead of imposing such restrictions on everyone, we are giving the opportunity of those willing to vaccinate to get back to some of these things. Why is it a problem to keep some restrictions for the unvaccinated that we've had for all for months? Unless you think there should never have been restrictions, but then how would you propose to handle all the folks that would have come knock on the doors of hospitals and clamor for oxygen, like what apparently happened in India?
I think CDC is saying vaccinated people should be masking, because they may still transmit the virus to all the unvacinated out there that have a much higher likelihood of ending up at the hospital should they get infected. If all were vaccinated, transmission would be much less of a problem (since risk of acute symptoms would be way lowered) and I'm not sure the CDC would mandate masks.
If that's true though, then the argument frequently given about requiring vaccinations to prevent mutation is not very strong if vaccinated people are still infectious hosts. So it seems the need to masks even with vaccination exists.
The CDC doesn't care about cases, they care about hospitalizations, and 99% of hospitalizations are unvaccinated people. If everyone is vaccinated and the virus is passing freely, the CDC couldn't care less because very few people would be going to the hospital. Just like how we don't mandate masks for the common cold, since that doesn't overload our hospital system like COVID has.
