Originally Posted by Gary et al

Holy moly this thread has gone downhill fast. Not that I didn't expect it to.

I just figured I'd chime it with facts/data if anybody ever decides to mine this thread.

I had a few major changes during 2018 that affect my tax liabilities, and in every way reduce my liability. Just looking at it YoY my effective tax rate would appear to have gone down by -0.18 to -0.24% depending on if basing the actual tax due on AGI or total gross.

However, because of the changes to my "tax profile" in reality my tax liabilities have gone UP this year and that is almost entirely because of not being able to take advantage of employment related deductions. This is to the tune of about +0.8 to 1.4%

Then to add more complexity to it, my income also went up. All in all for me it is basically a wash. Had I made 2017 what I did 2018 the little bit extra income in the higher bracket probably would have evened things out. But what I can say for certain is that my taxes did NOT go DOWN.