• .Donuts@lemmy.world
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    7 hours ago

    Would it be a game changer? It means you can do overtime without being taxed for it, right? Or maybe less taxed.

    That sounds like a quick and dirty way to exhaust the population even more in order to keep the bread and circus going on.

    So you got the folks working 60-100 hours a week then because it makes them a lot more money, so they are just slaving their life away. Wouldn’t a better fix be raising minimum wages?

    • Pandemanium@lemm.ee
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      2 hours ago

      What people misunderstand about the tax brackets is that your entire income doesn’t get moved to a higher bracket. It’s only the income in excess of it.

      So for example, let’s say you had $50,000 of taxable income in 2024 as a single filer, you’d pay 10% on that first $11,600 and 12% on the chunk of income between $11,601 and $47,150. Then you’d pay 22% on the remaining $2,850 that falls into the next tax bracket. The total bill would be about $6,053 — about 12% of your taxable income — even though your highest bracket is 22%. And this example doesn’t take into account the standard deduction.

      Bottom line, this won’t save people as much as they think it will. Usually the person in the example simply complains “I’m paying 22%” because it always feels like the paycheck isn’t enough.

    • andros_rex@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      What’ll actually happen under the Trump administration is that companies will be allowed to force mandatory overtime during the times they want it, and then cut your hours through the rest of the month so that your average hours are still less than 40.

      What I’d like is some changes in loopholes. I worked 60-100 weeks at a movie theater as a young adult, and didn’t get overtime pay because it was the “entertainment industry.”

    • MountingSuspicion@reddthat.com
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      6 hours ago

      I’m not the person you’re replying to, but though I agree that raising the minimum wage would be helpful, plenty of people are working overtime as is, even if they make more than 15/hr just to make ends meet. Plenty of people are working overtime for 20-30/hr. Would their wages go up if minimum wage went up? Maybe, but likely not and there’s certainly no guarantee. Plus, several states already have 15 as the minimum so it wouldn’t really matter to them.

      I’m a dem voter, and obviously there are much better ways to help people than tax free overtime, but I understand why that would be appealing.

    • Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      Smart workers then get contracts that specify anything over two hours a week is overtime.