[anm89]

There are absolutely empirically people paying a 50% percent of their income in taxes in SF.

The highest federal income tax backet is at 37%. the highest california state income tax bracket is 12.7%. San francisco residents pay a .38 payroll tax.

This is going to get you pretty darn close to 50% effective tax rate right there but we haven't even started to look at property taxes or sales taxes. So yeah, there are definitely people paying 50% taxes in SF.

[rsfern]

Those are the marginal tax rates. You can’t just add the marginal rates and come up with your actual tax burden, at least in the US. (Can’t speak specifically to property tax in CA)

Honestly surprised to see this misapprehension of progressive income tax on HN

[anm89]

You seem to be the one not understanding here. I said effective which accounts for marginal rates.

Thats why even though those numbers add up to 50%, i specifically said that will only get you close to 50% effective. Also the more you make, the more percentage wise will be paid at the highest marginal rate meaning some people will pay close to their highest marginal rate effectively.

Thats why the whole second point was there about other taxes. Those numbers dont have to add up to 50 for there to be people paying that rate

So yeah, no misunderstanding here. Im well aware of how marginal tax rates work.

[rsfern]

I will concede a misunderstanding perhaps of the income distribution in CA.

But the figures you quoted are the marginal rates, and at the federal level that top bracket kicks in at over 500k

in the limit of very high income, your effective rate will start to approach the top marginal rate. But the idea of 500k being the negligible portion of one’s gross income is just so far out of my experience, it’s hard to see why that’s the default assumption.

how many people is that even realistic for? I thought past a certain point peoples total comp started to be more things like equity

Edit: I think I see what you meant by “i specifically said that will only get you close to 50% effective”, initially I just added the marginal rate for federal and CA and thought that’s what you meant by “close to 50%”

I still don’t really know where you’re coming from though — say you’re single and your income is 1 M$, and you don’t do anything aside from standard deduction to reduce, that’s like 46% effective (I forgot payroll taxes before). Is 40k property tax realistic in SF? I genuinely don’t know

[cm2012]

Sales tax at 8.5% is another big one.