Posted on 07/30/2020 12:06:59 PM PDT by Impala64ssa
We are all this kid. There is not a single person reading this post right now who has not shared this experience. Some of us may have shared this experience longer ago than others, but the experience was still shared. You get your first job. For me, it was McDonalds. It's your first time making money outside of getting an allowance from your parents. It's your first taste of adulthood.
You do the math in your head, multiplying how much you are making by how many hours you worked. Two weeks later, you get your first paycheck. You're happy. You're excited. Then unfortunately, you notice less money than you were expecting
I wish I could tell this kid it gets better. But the next lesson is finding out what your taxes get spent on. SPOILER: It's not bridges and roads, as leftist douchebags smugly say (see ANDREW YANG WANTS TO TAX COW FARTS TO CONTROL YOUR DIET and TRUMP TO STRUGGLING PARENTS: IF TEACHERS REFUSE TO DO THEIR JOB, YOU SHOULD HAVE YOUR SCHOOL TAXES REFUNDED). Then one day, you find yourself self-employed. It's your job to physically take the taxes out of your own paycheck and with each quarterly check you send to the government you find yourself becoming more and more of a libertarian whack job. Eventually, you die. And your family gets taxed for that.
My advice to this kid is to take those warm fuzzies he had before he opened the envelope and hang on them for as long as he can. More importantly, congratulations on the first job! Jokes about taxes aside, there are few better feelings.
This year, due to the pandemic, my bonuses are less, so I might have to wait until October to max out my FICA.
Got my first paycheck @ 16 in ‘72, ran the numbers, 35% haircut. Can’t quote my comments here, though. Drag, it was...
I doubt he could spell corporation.
My oldest and I were working the same place when he got his first paycheck. He was totally flabbergasted when it was less than he’d calculated he’d be getting.
He had anticipated income taxed but was not prepared for Social Security and Medicare.
I explained SS to him like this: that amount there? That is being taken from your check and being put directly into your grandparents’ SS checks. There is NOT an account with your name on it, set aside for you and waiting somewhere until you retire. From time to time you’ll get a letter from Social Security telling you how much “you” have available. That’s imaginary, OK?
A coworker and I had not long before that about the same subject. He had been looking at what he had been paying in SS as some sort of retirement account. We disabused him of that notion. He was a lot older than my kid, too!
I have to ask, just how many damn times is this story going to be posted?
Poor kid...I feel for him.
I remember doing my first tax return when I was 16 and could not make sense of it. You make this amount, deduct a random number in the tax form then look up tax in chart in back of tax guide, and this is the tax you owe or have a refund coming back. This was the EZ form. The state had a different tax rate. Now add other deductions, home mortgage, stock income, business expenses etc.
I learned early on if you got 1 hour of overtime the gov’t took 42% calling it unearned income and taxed you at a higher rate.
Look at the tax rates for different amount of income. You are penalized if you do well. Meanwhile the politicians literally use insider stock trading to make millions that would put you in prison.
Yes, some are slow learners.
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