Comment by angelgonzales
1 month ago
I totally am paying a massive amount of capital gains taxes! I’m also saving up for a house which means every dollar I don’t contribute to a down payment becomes principal and interest on a mortgage which equals even more money out of my pocket. For instance if I pay $37k in capital gains one year (which I did) and if my principal on a $500k house is $200k at 6% and $1500 monthly payments I’ll have to pay $33k in interest on just the $37k I didn’t pay up front!
Some cursory googling shows you have to make capital gains of between $185,000 and $250,000 to have to pay $37,000 in capital gains tax. This is between three and six times as much as someone in their 20s will earn in a year. I think you need a bit more perspective of what it's like to be a young person outside the extremely well compensated tech sector.
Ironically, capital gains tax rates are essentially regressive as they are lower than the typical marginal tax rate for someone earning at those levels. They are a big handout to the capital class, not some special punishment.
So to whine about them shows a baseline belief that income should not be taxed at all, I guess?
I wouldn’t call it “well compensated”, I work really hard for my money and it’s not like my company is just giving it away to me out of the kindness of their hearts. I also worked in food service while in college and know what it’s like to make ~$15 an hour which is one of the reasons why I went to college and learned the skills needed to create value for my employer. A big point of mine is that my grandfather went to a community college for $3 (the price of his ID card) and got a job as a machinist to pay for his multi-lot house in Southern California in 2 years. He was the sole earner so his wife could raise three children. Nowadays that house is $2M, AI didn’t exist the way it did in the 1970s when he bought the house and AI didn’t cause the increase in the ratio of home costs to wages, which is arguably the biggest issue of our time and is not hypothetical.
Housing to wages has been going up every year for like the last 20 years, I'm not sure we can blame AI for that?
Regardless of how hard you worked or what you deserve, having 30k in capital gains puts you into a very, very, verrry small minority of americans.
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Don't the vast majority of young people entering the workforce have no capital gains to deal with at all? That tends to be more of a problem for people who are already well off. Are you talking about a narrower demographic or something?
The amounts you paid in capital gains are about 50% higher than I've ever paid. That was the second year I worked at a big tech company and suddenly had stock, which was about a decade into an my extremely lucrative career as a software developer. Most of my friends don't have to deal with capital gains at all because they're not part of the investor class. On average the rates of trading must be much lower for people in their 20s, no?
Dear lord, what percentage of the Gen Z (the population mentioned in the article) do you think pay capital gain taxes???
Congrats I guess, you are clearly rich enough to pay taxes. Most young people would consider themselves lucky to have $5K to rub together.