Don't forget sales tax, property tax, gas taxes... (Score 2, Interesting)

I'm pretty certain that everyone who has claimed nothing, due to the fact that they are getting a refund, has recognized that this was probably not the intention of the poll. However, have you ever sat down to truly calculate your tax burden? Even those that didn't make enough money for income taxes, probably still paid quite a bit in taxes.

• Do you buy gasoline? Then it may have been taxed. (For road maintenance, and such).
• Do you have a local sales tax? That's collected on money you spend, not money you earn.
• Own property? A car? Don't forget property taxes and car registration!

Example:

I work best in examples, so I will use myself for a quick back-of-the-envelope calculation. I am a single male, living in California, with a condo. I will then take $1 of my earnings, and see how it is taxed.

Income side:

I am in the 28% federal tax bracket. While the scale is "sliding", I'm making this worse case, so I'll claim that 28 cents goes to taxes. State income taxes are 9.3%, so there goes another 9.3 cents. Social Security removes 7.5% from my paycheck (and I'm ignoring the 7.5% my employer is required to match). For the moment, I'm going to sweep Medicare, State Disability Insurance, and the rest under the rug. Just on income, I am out 44.8 cents.

"Property" taxes:

I own a condo. Annual property taxes (for me) work out to be about 4.2% of my annual income. I also drive a car. Car registration costs money, although it's small as a percentage of my income (0.5%). If you don't make much, however, this will add up quickly. I'll call this another 4.7 cents out of my dollar, taking me down to 50.5 cents that I can actually spend.

Sales taxes:

In my locale, there is a 7.75% sales tax on anything you buy. So, when I go to spend my 50.5 cents, 7.75% is tacked onto many items. Some items, like gasonline, hotel rooms, alcohol and tobacco receive special taxes, just on those items. So if you buy any of them, you are out even more. I don't (save gasoline), so I'll just wave my arms and say the gas tax and the food items I buy that are exempt from sales tax cancel each other out. I honestly don't know. Still, that's about 4 more cents (7.75% of 50.5) that I pay in taxes.

Grand total:

For every dollar I earn (over a certain amount), I get approximately 47 cents that I can actually spend. Was that what you expected?

(I'd love it if some of the non-US readers could run a similar calculation for us).