Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT strips 4190-4194 (3rd - 7th February 2020)
Tova:
Okay. I still find it weird that your penalty is based on how much of your income was withheld by your employer for tax, something you have little control over. Or am I misunderstanding that as well?
jwhouk:
You do have control of how much your employer withholds from your check. It's called a W-4 form. You can claim a certain number of exemptions, which your employer uses to determine how much tax should be taken out of your check weekly. You can also ask for your employer to take an additional amount out of each check (weekly, biweekly, monthly) in case you think your withholding won't be enough for the year based on your tax situation. (Looks up at previous post, sighs)
DSL:
... And if you're self-employed and file quarterly estimated taxes ... you want to be a particularly good estimator. I choose to err on the side of overpaying. It means the government gets the free use of my money for part of the year, but it beats paying a penalty.
Wingy:
--- Quote from: Tova on 07 Feb 2020, 13:57 ---
--- Quote from: awkwardness on 06 Feb 2020, 22:13 ---What it does is require you to show proof of coverage to get your state income tax returned to you...
--- End quote ---
Okay... not totally clear. "your income tax returned to you? I can only assume you don't get your entire income tax returned to if you have coverage. Can you be more precise?
Does it mean that a portion of your tax is some kind of a health care levy which is returnable only if you can show proof of health care coverage?
--- Quote from: Is it cold in here? on 06 Feb 2020, 09:54 ---Buying it is legally required, to make sure there are enough healthy people paying in to meet the costs of the people with pre-existing conditions.
--- End quote ---
It means, if you don't have a documented health plan, and you paid in too much income tax to the state, then your refund of overpaid tax, all or in part, can be kept by the state. Ostensibly to help pay off the cost of whatever care you used during the year but did not pay for in the form of private insurance and thus took from the state. The Federal level ACA (Obamacare) was similarly modeled and this was called the "individual mandate" and worked similarly: if you didn't have proof of coverage, it made the most sense to avoid overpaying taxes (because you wouldn't get a refund).
Past tense is used above because the Republicans in the federal Congress passed a bill and it was signed into law effectively eliminating the federal individual mandate.* Now there is a court case pending, last I knew, attempting to remove the last bits of the ACA from the law by noticing that the funding method (the individual mandate) is not severable from the rest of the ACA bits, and since the mandate has been severed (made void), therefore the rest of the law is similarly null and void. I believe this case is still pending in federal appeals court.
* Certain more libertarian elements (me included) viewed this with rejoicing because it removed what amounts to a tax imposed by executive order. That's a dangerous precedent to set and accept for any length of time; it's Congresses job to levy taxes, not the executive branch by fiat. However, we imagined that this event would also force Congress back to doing their job and finding the funds to pay for the rest of the ACA. This has not turned out to be the case and as a result, many of the state-driven implementation pieces of the ACA are now seriously jeopardized due to lack of funding, with the end result of people dying for lack of proper health care. The Republican party branded candidates are going to have a lot to answer for come November 6, 2020...
--- End quote ---
cybersmurf:
Funny thing: IIRC over here in Austria, if you manage to tell them you'd get a tax return of less than 800 to 1000 euro, they don't even contest it, since somebody looking at it costs more than that.
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