Another classic
Forget Sherlock, Jr., we've got Gruber, Jr. going here.
Turns out you don't really pay your taxes, some other unspecified entity does, presumably your employer or "just all of us doing something together," which is more the tone, if not the text. Sounds like an unholy marriage of Friedman and Sunstein.
Actually it's a nice, uncontroversial, obvious article. But it would have been more honest if it had estimated elasticity and given a more accurate Tax Freedom Day (the real point would be to explain why it shouldn't apply to employers as well as employees, which the article only feints at, in the wrong direction, but doesn't manage to do). But hey, government taxes are as natural and essential as grass to a cow. I wonder what the elasticity of grass is? (No, Colorado, I'm not talking to you.)
posted by ColumbusGuy @ 4:00 AM
3 Comments:
This guy's employer should take all his salary and pay it to the government. Then at least he wouldn't have any taxes to worry about.
I like the cut of your jib, Anonymous.
I thought the disagreements voiced in some of the article comments were on point. The article way over-simplifies "tax incidence." For one thing, different people pay different tax rates, even in the same state, but that generally is not considered in setting wages.
So if three people do the same job for $100,000, but one is single, one has a huge mortgage deduction each year, and one has 7 kids, they will each have a different effective tax rate. Nevertheless, the employer will not pay them differently based on how much of the salary they pay in taxes. The job is worth $100,000 to the employer, and that's what they pay.
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