No, you don’t. The withholding is higher. That’s it. At the end of the year your gross income is what determines the tax rate. If the bonus put you in a different tax bracket then yeah, it’s taxed slightly higher. However, if you are sitting below 80k gross your effective tax rate will be around 18%ish. So, that’s what you’re taxed at. None of us in the regionals with the single regional income will be in high tax brackets where you wouldn’t get some of that withholding back.

You are getting an FAA violation for altitude deviation between his joke and your comment.

My bad, missed the joke completely. I just get frustrated when people don’t understand the difference between withholding and actual taxes and missed the second part of his statement. Eh well, now that’s there for someone to maybe see and learn.

Lol I get that way when folks complain about a raise because it'll put them in a higher tax bracket 🤣

I understand the difference, but I do appreciate you explaining it for anyone watching. I’ve had to explain it many times myself so it’s good to see the info out there. All I’m saying is that if you’re expecting an extra 22k on your paycheck, you will be disappointed. Although you could do some mighty fiddling with your exemptions to try to keep more of it from being withheld, not sure…
Also…are AA WO captains not clearing $80k?!

I do too, just couldn’t resist the opportunity.

Was more referring to the FO side. I’m pretty sure every regional captain is clearing $80k.

I had a CA complain about this once after we got our pay raises. "Im actually making less now because I pay more in taxes".

It was a long 4-day.

I almost told him just wait until you get to AA and you make so much money you end up having to pay the government!

I wonder if this is sort of possible.

I understand how marginal tax rates work on an annualized basis. You don’t ever lose money by making more

but what about withholding? Could a midyear shift in income cause required withholding to increase such that for a few months you lost ground? You still don’t lose money over the year but maybe a transient dip in take home pay?

I'm not good enough with withholdings to say for certain, but I feel like the absolute worst you might see is a smaller increase than you figured.

Either way like you said, even if you could manage it you'd just be made whole again on your tax return.