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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33977 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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You think blue collar workers don't know how to get the EITC, but your outgroup does? Are there no tax preparation services where you live?

I am a high income white collar worker. I hire an accountant.

But yes, I believe that blue collar workers are often bad at doing taxes and miss out on significant advantages.

nationally about 80% of people eligible for the EITC receive it.

https://www.eitc.irs.gov/eitc-central/participation-rate-by-state/eitc-participation-rate-by-states

I rest my case. Those are really bad numbers.

80% success rate is pretty good. It's pretty obviously not limited to trust fund babies.

The point was that EITC is not limited to hardworking proles but is available to everyone, including people with fake email jobs. The people with fake email jobs will be exceptionally good at claiming the credit. This is what they are built for. That is what they do.

The dude fixing your sink... not so much.

In any case, we're deep in the weeds now. I don't think Trump's proposal is a good one. I never claimed it was.

But blue collar people are getting the shaft and have been for a long time. We need fewer forms. We need fewer rewards for people who fill out forms. We need ways to reward people that don't involve a bureaucrat processing a form, then taking from Peter to pay Paul.

The dude fixing your sink... not so much.

Plumbers are not the brightest trade, but they're functional enough to know how to claim the EITC(pay someone to do your taxes for you). The same is true for basically all working class jobs; your coworkers in February will tell you tips and tricks for getting the most back, and it usually boils down to 'who do you pay to do it'.

Lower working class people get taken advantage of all the time, but this is mostly tax preparers catering, specifically, to lower income individuals and not to the working class more broadly- and most of the taking advantage of is by charging larger fees to get the money sooner, which is ultimately the fault of the people getting taken advantage of.

But blue collar people are getting the shaft and have been for a long time. We need fewer forms. We need fewer rewards for people who fill out forms. We need ways to reward people that don't involve a bureaucrat processing a form, then taking from Peter to pay Paul.

The way to do that is to eliminate fiddly deductions and replace them with lower tax brackets. But people will scream that this helps the rich too (because it does), unless you put special surtaxes and bracket inversions in -- these have been done but they're also unpopular. Especially the inversions, because everyone making good money knows if your brackets go 10%, 20% 30%, 35%, 30%, that upper 30% bracket is going to get eliminated next time Congress is in session.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think this includes people who just didn't file at all

The participation rate shown in the table is the percentage of eligible taxpayers who receive an EITC payment (Number receiving an EITC payment/Number eligible for EITC). The rate is calculated from linking individuals in the American Community Survey (ACS) collected by the Census Bureau to their tax records provided by the IRS on EITC payments and participation. Specifically, the number eligible for EITC is determined by a model using income and demographic information from the ACS, and the number receiving an EITC payment is determined from IRS tax records.

Interesting, that's a surprise. I know a lot of eligible people who either just don't file or don't bother to take the credit (because it's tiny for single people and probably audit-bait).
Guess I have a biased sample

I can assure you the EIC is not missed out on.

Apparently, 20% of the time it is.

https://www.eitc.irs.gov/eitc-central/participation-rate-by-state/eitc-participation-rate-by-states

Mea culpa.

tax preparation services

That has got to be one of the most obviously made up sinecures in the whole world. Making the tax system so complicated normal people require experts to file returns is one of these routinely insane things Americans somehow shrug off, along with imperial units and their medical insurance system.

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