If you are a captain making $300k a year (8-year 244 k salary plus $56k from non tax-deferred investments) you have an effective California income tax rate of 8.28% and a tax bill of $24,835.

If you want to count coup on me for the $165, so be it.

If you are an eight year captain and don’t have investments bringing in $56k a year (basically about $700k in a stock portfolio) you haven’t been saving enough. And if you don’t have $1 million in investments when you top out at 12 years, and are making $266k in salary, you are seriously delinquent in your financial planning.

So yeah, by the time your career peaks, it will be every bit of $25k a year.