[xvector]

$1.3M. Paying $600k in federal+state. Then sales tax is another ~10% on what's left. That brings me to earning 48c on every dollar, so not a 60% tax but a 52% tax which is still damn egregious given that I had better roads and most public services in Florida (0% income tax) than I have had here in California. I know people that have moved to other 0% states that feel similarly.

BTW, I am not "rich." I still can't afford a house in CA. My income last year was a temporary fluke due to RSU inflation. So meanwhile billionaires get away, regular W-2s like me get squeezed by both the working class and the billionaires.

Taxes are largely a waste and a scam. I have seen firsthand how government contractors overcharge absolutely scam the American people. Millions of dollars charged for a shitty Python script written in a day. Screws selling for $80 each. We do not need to pay as much as we do. Years of "small" increases have made people complacent to the point where losing half our income to some bureaucratic black hole is seen as acceptable.

[blago]

There is no need for exact numbers. I'm mostly interested in your tax bracket and effective federal and state rates. It sounds like you had a good year with a one-time payment that couldn't be classified as long-term gains, virtually no expenses, and you are probably filing as a single. That's the only way those numbers can make sense. Do you think this one-time fluke puts you at odds and you are being "squeezed by the working class"? Do you think your fluke-year taxes are representative? Do we really have a country or a CA-wide problem with 60% tax? Is there anything that you, or your company, could have done to better plan for this event?

[blago]

> ...52% tax which is still damn egregious given that I had better roads and most public services in Florida (0% income tax)

Hmm, I live in Southern Florida. Full time. It has the shittiest roads of any place in the US I have been and some of the highest fatality rates to go with.

Highways look like someone ran a snow plow at full speed, turning what were once scattered potholes into a continuous network of trenches making their own interstate.

This is in a state without cold weather, ice, or snow...

There are many non-0 income tax states that have vastly superior roads than FL. Does this prove anything about taxes?

[mckn1ght]

I am fully onboard with how we should be tamping down on contractors overcharging. The same as I think universities are overcharging to capture government-guaranteed school loans. But neither of those makes me think the idea of taxes or school loans are bad ideas, per se. We need better accountability, but then there’s a cost to that, too…

> My income last year was a temporary fluke due to RSU inflation

In other words, you won the lottery and still have the gall to complain that it wasn’t higher. Stock equity is called monopoly money for a reason.

I filtered the current zillow results for houses in california below $700k and got nearly 22k hits, including plenty in the east bay (no idea where you actually live, i’m just sticking to the SFBA as one of the most expensive areas to live with high tech employment potential). I think what you meant to say is you can’t afford to pay cash to outright own the ideal home you want. That’s not how it works.

You go on to complain about billionaires “getting away” and sure, they should be paying more to reach a fair share in my opinion, but you are simply out of touch if you don’t think that receiving a net sum of $700k in one year isn’t a completely life changing amount of money. That’s 33 years living at the single-person poverty income level, at which about 37 million people live in the US.

I really don’t think you’re going to get much sympathy on that from anyone except that billionaire class (and their wannabes) you seem to detest, so you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, there.