Columbia financial aid

Shraf
Sat, 09 Feb 2008 21:21:20 +0000

You totally ignore FICA. Do you know what that is? That’s another 8% or so. So add that to your 29% and we’re already at 37%.

And did you run an AMT calculation? Do you know what the AMT is either? Do you know how it works?



Where do you get 8% from for FICA? Are you just assuming for the sake of your argument that the OP’s parents are self employed? Since odds are they aren’t self employed, their company covers all but ~1.5% of that tax with the 1.5% being the individual’s contribution to social security…and though the social security and medicare taxes are widely criticized in the literature for keeping wages lower than they should be, only 1.5% comes out of your check and your employer pays the rest. So if you want to count all 8%, you should first add the 6.5% that OP’s parents would never see nor would be considered part of their salary to begin with.

Oh, and of course the program isn’t ignoring the individual’s contribution to social security…so that 1.5% (not 8%) is already included in the 29%.

I will concede that i did not include AMT and wasn’t really aware of how it works (only that it stood for alternative minimum tax)…but since you are so stubborn I looked it up and…good god that’s some complicated stuff…but from what I’ve parsed out…the alternative minimum taxable income for a $200k income would be about $50k at a rate of about 20-25% (according to wikipedia)…so again being super liberal with my calculations that would add another $12k in taxes which makes the effective tax rate about 35%

…can you just admit that saying you’d be forking over half your income to the government was a gross overstatement and that the actual number is much much closer to the 33% I quoted? Oh and its one thing to talk down to high schoolers and another to talk down to other college grads…totally not appreciated especially when you don’t even have your info straight.