I think this is at least partially the result of intentional propaganda. It benefits the elite greatly if a lot of Americans are screaming against higher top tax rates due to this faulty logic. There are also a lot of anecdotes of people not accepting higher paying job offers or promotions within their company, which also benefits the business owners.

https://youtube.com/shorts/-621rVJvUdY

Mr. "Population collapse is the biggest threat to the world."

Maybe it's just the biggest threat to capitalism and your ROI. Why do you think he's supporting the make everyone dumber party?

it's in the shitpost community and there's no sources cited

Your partner is a moron who doesn't understand relatively simple math.

This is not a US specific issue, tbh. I've heard this weird belief repeated by all sorts of people.

"you can't make less money by making more money"

Oddly enough it kinda does. OT can make you pay out more taxes on that one check since withholdings are calculated by check. Basically the government/payroll system thinks you're going to be making that every week so more taxes will be taken out.

In reality this only effects the size of your tax bill or return at the end of the year.

Should print out a poster infographic explaining progressive taxation and put it up on the wall in the break room

Seen the same bullshit when I worked retail. Nothing will convince them.

It's easier to trick someone than it is to convince them they're wrong.

We covered how taxes are calculated at school, it isn't very complicated. Yet SO MANY people insist they end up getting paid more it made me question myself for a while.

Although sometimes the removal of certain benefits does mean people can be worse off for £1 extra. Which if anything is just a sign that the benefits were poorly thought out and should taper off instead of being a hard limit.

The only way that's a problem is if you're on certain government benefits, if you make just a little bit too much there's a hard cutoff for many benefits so you may end up losing more than you made in OT. But if your staff is facing this dilemma, they need to be paid more.

Yeah, the Welfare Cliff is the only place where this happens and it's unconscionable.

It is kind of by design to keep people from trying to get ahead at all

Poor Sam

FWIW globally, there is the issue of "welfare traps". Benefits for low income people are usually tied to income (or savings). Once income reaches a threshold, these benefits must be replaced with income. So a higher income may result in a net loss.

This all boils down to a common misconception about 'tax brackets'.

To simplify, pretend there's a 28% tax bracket up to 100,000 dollars, and a 33% tax bracket when you hit 100k. The first 100k is always taxed at 28%, no matter what you make, and it's only the incremental amount that gets taxed heavier. So here in this example, that would mean tax burden would be 28,000.33 instead of 28,000.28. These are not the exact brackets or percentages, but it's at least showing the right magnitude of increase versus total amount.

However, many people are "afraid" of bumping a higher tax bracket. They think the tax bill would go from 28,000.28 to 33,000.33. That the tax bracket bumps up all your liability. I remember growing up people saying "I have to watch out and not hit the bigger tax bracket, if I'm close then I need a big raise to make it worth it, or else the raise is going to cost me more than it would make me". This a big driver of antipathy toward democrat tax policies, a belief that mild success will punish them, despite it only increasing on the incremental amount.

In exact numbers, 5 cents.

That one dollar in the 33% bracket has .33 in taxes instead of .28. So their obligation goes up .05 per every dollar in the 33% tax bracket.