Pilot killing taxes?
03-07-2019, 01:24 PM
#291
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2006
Position: 767A (Ret)
Posts: 6,248
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.
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.
Thanks for steering the discussion back toward taxes, since a lot of pilots will be filing returns soon. The thread was in danger of being closed.
03-07-2019, 01:45 PM
#292
Perennial Reserve
Joined APC: Jan 2018
Posts: 11,480
Interesting read in today’s LA Times:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...307-story.html
We now have free agent baseball players demanding more money to play in high tax states. That’s going to carry over to domiciles. The difference in being - for instance - SEA based as opposed to SFO or LAX is damn near equal to your 401k company contribution. It has become enough that companies need to start considering it in basing options and the union considering it during negotiations.
Yeah, you can always commute, but why not have the best of both worlds?
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...307-story.html
We now have free agent baseball players demanding more money to play in high tax states. That’s going to carry over to domiciles. The difference in being - for instance - SEA based as opposed to SFO or LAX is damn near equal to your 401k company contribution. It has become enough that companies need to start considering it in basing options and the union considering it during negotiations.
Yeah, you can always commute, but why not have the best of both worlds?
03-08-2019, 06:49 AM
#293
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2008
Posts: 19,259
Originally Posted by Excargodog
Interesting read in today’s LA Times:
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...307-story.html
We now have free agent baseball players demanding more money to play in high tax states. That’s going to carry over to domiciles. The difference in being - for instance - SEA based as opposed to SFO or LAX is damn near equal to your 401k company contribution. It has become enough that companies need to start considering it in basing options and the union considering it during negotiations.
Yeah, you can always commute, but why not have the best of both worlds?
https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-...307-story.html
We now have free agent baseball players demanding more money to play in high tax states. That’s going to carry over to domiciles. The difference in being - for instance - SEA based as opposed to SFO or LAX is damn near equal to your 401k company contribution. It has become enough that companies need to start considering it in basing options and the union considering it during negotiations.
Yeah, you can always commute, but why not have the best of both worlds?
03-08-2019, 11:33 AM
#294
Perennial Reserve
Joined APC: Jan 2018
Posts: 11,480
Originally Posted by sailingfun
You will never see pay negotiated on a individual base method. Most pilots would not stand for it and it would cause significant changes in where management placed crews.
https://www.dla.mil/Careers/Programs...rsallwnce.aspx
So does the state department and other agencies.
Not sure why it couldn’t be done by the airlines.
For that matter, I believe United actually DOES have some such policy for their Guam based personnel.
03-09-2019, 11:14 AM
#295
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Oct 2016
Posts: 846
My effective tax rate for 2018 compared to 2017 is 10.8 vs 12.4 and when I ran my 2017 numbers through 2018’s new tax law brackets the difference is greater, 10.4 vs 12.4. This is the only real comparison, effective tax rate for 2018 compared to the effective tax rate from last year using this year’s tax law.
In my opinion(s) there shouldn’t be any tax deductions for SALT. There is no reason why the states that choose to tax their residents higher should be subsidized by the other states. The only reason why the federal government sends money to states is because of federal mandates. On average, state legislatures only control about 35% of their budget. The rest is just strings attached to programs that the federal government mandates.
If the federal government only appropriated money on what the constitution allows it to, article one section eight, we wouldn’t have the massive spending issue we have. We don’t have a tax revenue issue, we have a spending issue.
The best progressive tax system would be the FairTax. This would eliminate federal income, payroll, corporate (this is just a tax on people anyway), capital gains, gift, estate, all federal taxes except for excise taxes and replace it with a consumption tax on new food and services with a prebate up to that family’s poverty level. The tax rate would from from negative (for those who are below the poverty level or who only buy used goods) up to the rate set. Those 1% would pay more because they buy more and they buy new. The poor and middle class would pay less because they spend less and would buy used. So not only does the rate one pays go up as you spend more but the amount you pay in taxes also goes up the more you spend. Perfect regressivity. The tax base would be larger because you are taxing spending instead of income (those 1% without income would now pay when they spend), you include underground economies (illegal activities like drugs, theft, pimps, working under the table, etc). Compliance costs go way down (about $600 billion annually) because only business would have to file, and evasion goes down because most transactions are from big retailers whose clerk isn’t going to be handing out goods without charging sales tax, if that’s even possible with current point of sales machines. It certainly will be less evasion compared to the complete honor system we have now. As for company to company sales, those are never taxed anyway. Only the final point of sale is taxed when sold to a consumer. So there wouldn’t be much evasion there either. All tax loopholes would go away. If politicians wanted to decrease the amount of tax, the only way would be to decrease the rate. No more favors to industries or companies for their lobbying efforts to help the re-election fund of the politician. And therein lies the only problem with the FairTax. The FairTax would be the biggest transfer of power to the people in history, which means politicians are not going to pass this willingly.
As for the cost of healthcare, you have to take into account that currently, the consumer’s cost disincentive is almost completely taken away. The consumer doesn’t care about costs when they are on any kind of government provided healthcare system and because of that, the medical professionals are incentivized to increase their prices. And even though company subsidized health insurance is a form of capitalistic health care plan, unless you are in a high deductible health plan, your costs (premiums) stay the same regardless of the cost of your service or procedure.
In two areas where this isn’t the case (because it’s not normally covered by current health insurance schemes) is laser eye surgery and cosmetic surgery. In those two examples where the consumer has a cost disincentive, the price of the procedures has gone down while at the same time the medical professionals have made more money and also improved the procedures through innovation.
Many other costs are simply because of government mandates on the insurance industry to include certain things in their plans, or anti-competitive regulations not allowing insurance companies to offer what their customers demand across state lines. Next time you watch tv, take notice on the amount of auto insurance companies that advertise. There are literally a dozen auto insurance companies that are competing vehemently to provide you the best insurance for the lowest cost as possible in order to take you away from your current insurance. Then notice that there are exactly ZERO health insurance companies doing this at tenth of the level that auto insurance companies do.
In my opinion(s) there shouldn’t be any tax deductions for SALT. There is no reason why the states that choose to tax their residents higher should be subsidized by the other states. The only reason why the federal government sends money to states is because of federal mandates. On average, state legislatures only control about 35% of their budget. The rest is just strings attached to programs that the federal government mandates.
If the federal government only appropriated money on what the constitution allows it to, article one section eight, we wouldn’t have the massive spending issue we have. We don’t have a tax revenue issue, we have a spending issue.
The best progressive tax system would be the FairTax. This would eliminate federal income, payroll, corporate (this is just a tax on people anyway), capital gains, gift, estate, all federal taxes except for excise taxes and replace it with a consumption tax on new food and services with a prebate up to that family’s poverty level. The tax rate would from from negative (for those who are below the poverty level or who only buy used goods) up to the rate set. Those 1% would pay more because they buy more and they buy new. The poor and middle class would pay less because they spend less and would buy used. So not only does the rate one pays go up as you spend more but the amount you pay in taxes also goes up the more you spend. Perfect regressivity. The tax base would be larger because you are taxing spending instead of income (those 1% without income would now pay when they spend), you include underground economies (illegal activities like drugs, theft, pimps, working under the table, etc). Compliance costs go way down (about $600 billion annually) because only business would have to file, and evasion goes down because most transactions are from big retailers whose clerk isn’t going to be handing out goods without charging sales tax, if that’s even possible with current point of sales machines. It certainly will be less evasion compared to the complete honor system we have now. As for company to company sales, those are never taxed anyway. Only the final point of sale is taxed when sold to a consumer. So there wouldn’t be much evasion there either. All tax loopholes would go away. If politicians wanted to decrease the amount of tax, the only way would be to decrease the rate. No more favors to industries or companies for their lobbying efforts to help the re-election fund of the politician. And therein lies the only problem with the FairTax. The FairTax would be the biggest transfer of power to the people in history, which means politicians are not going to pass this willingly.
As for the cost of healthcare, you have to take into account that currently, the consumer’s cost disincentive is almost completely taken away. The consumer doesn’t care about costs when they are on any kind of government provided healthcare system and because of that, the medical professionals are incentivized to increase their prices. And even though company subsidized health insurance is a form of capitalistic health care plan, unless you are in a high deductible health plan, your costs (premiums) stay the same regardless of the cost of your service or procedure.
In two areas where this isn’t the case (because it’s not normally covered by current health insurance schemes) is laser eye surgery and cosmetic surgery. In those two examples where the consumer has a cost disincentive, the price of the procedures has gone down while at the same time the medical professionals have made more money and also improved the procedures through innovation.
Many other costs are simply because of government mandates on the insurance industry to include certain things in their plans, or anti-competitive regulations not allowing insurance companies to offer what their customers demand across state lines. Next time you watch tv, take notice on the amount of auto insurance companies that advertise. There are literally a dozen auto insurance companies that are competing vehemently to provide you the best insurance for the lowest cost as possible in order to take you away from your current insurance. Then notice that there are exactly ZERO health insurance companies doing this at tenth of the level that auto insurance companies do.
03-09-2019, 04:51 PM
#296
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Mar 2014
Posts: 3,091
Originally Posted by sailingfun
You will never see pay negotiated on a individual base method. Most pilots would not stand for it and it would cause significant changes in where management placed crews.
Isn't that the point? If the company wants pilots based in SFO or XXX they need to cough up and not rely on commuters to staff. Or provide PS deadhead to/from. The head of the federal reserve in SFO resigned recently because they couldn't afford the rent there.
I would gladly move to domicile if the pay/cost of living were equitable.
03-09-2019, 07:20 PM
#297
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: May 2010
Position: Baja Vermont
Posts: 5,171
Originally Posted by Name User
???
Isn't that the point? If the company wants pilots based in SFO or XXX they need to cough up and not rely on commuters to staff. Or provide PS deadhead to/from. The head of the federal reserve in SFO resigned recently because they couldn't afford the rent there.
I would gladly move to domicile if the pay/cost of living were equitable.
Isn't that the point? If the company wants pilots based in SFO or XXX they need to cough up and not rely on commuters to staff. Or provide PS deadhead to/from. The head of the federal reserve in SFO resigned recently because they couldn't afford the rent there.
I would gladly move to domicile if the pay/cost of living were equitable.
GF
03-10-2019, 06:42 PM
#298
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Feb 2008
Posts: 19,259
Originally Posted by Excargodog
I don’t know. The US military adjusts quarters allowance based upon off base housing and other costs.
https://www.dla.mil/Careers/Programs...rsallwnce.aspx
So does the state department and other agencies.
Not sure why it couldn’t be done by the airlines.
For that matter, I believe United actually DOES have some such policy for their Guam based personnel.
https://www.dla.mil/Careers/Programs...rsallwnce.aspx
So does the state department and other agencies.
Not sure why it couldn’t be done by the airlines.
For that matter, I believe United actually DOES have some such policy for their Guam based personnel.
03-12-2019, 08:52 AM
#299
Gets Weekends Off
Joined APC: Nov 2013
Position: Fastest Hunk of Junk in the Galaxy
Posts: 1,657
The $10k SALT bit me in the rear, but overall my tax liability remained at 17%, and my earnings increased by 20% -- those additional earnings would've all fallen under AMT last year. In 2 years I lose the child tax credits so that will hurt a little, but I think the new law was either a push or a slight benefit in my situation.
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