New York » Millionaires can be just like everyone else. At least when it comes to paying taxes.
Mitt Romney released records this week that show he pays a tax rate of about 15 percent of his income. The relatively low figure is raising eyebrows because it’s on par with the rate paid by many middle-class households. That’s despite the Republican presidential candidate’s impressive income of $45 million over the past two years.
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An example of how taxes are calculated
A person’s taxes are not calculated solely on his or her salary. Lots of things come into play. But here’s a simplified version of how someone’s taxes might be calculated:
A single man in his early 30s working as a midlevel executive makes $98,650.
Gross income $98,650
Personal exemption for 2011 $3,700
Standard deduction for 2011 $5,800
Taxable income $89,150
Tax on the first $8,500 (at 10%) $ 850
Tax on the next $25,999 (at 15%) $3,900
Tax on the next $49,099 (at 25%) $12,275
Tax on the next $5,549 (at 28%) $1,554
Total federal tax bill $18,579
Tax rate, compared with his gross income 18.8%
Sources: The Associated Press, The IRS
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Even if investment income doesn’t play a big role in your finances, understanding the basics of how tax rates work can help even the average wage earner save hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a year.
Here’s an overview:
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Tax rate basics » An essential starting point is to look at how tax rates are applied.
Taxpayers can currently fall into one of six federal tax brackets depending on their taxable income. This amount includes items such as wages and distributions from retirement accounts. The tax rate for each bracket ranges from 10 percent to 35 percent. This is the most basic building block of tax planning because your taxable income can be reduced considerably by credits, exemptions and deductions.
Here’s the breakdown of how much single filers would pay in federal income taxes depending on their taxable income for 2011:
10 percent » income up to $8,500
15 percent » more than $8,500 up to $34,500
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25 percent » more than $34,500 up to $83,600
28 percent » more than $83,600 up to $174,000
33 percent » more than $174,400 up to $379,150
35 percent » amount more than $379,150
Keep in mind that these are marginal rates, meaning your income is taxed in tiers. The first $10,000 you earn, for example, is taxed at a lower rate than the next $10,000.
The current federal rates are set to expire at the end of this year. If Congress doesn’t act by then, the rates would revert to levels from before the Bush-era tax cuts, which ranged from 15 percent to 39.6 percent.
For now, federal income tax rates overall are near historic lows, says Joseph Rosenberg, a research associate at the Tax Policy Center in Washington, D.C. He also said that nearly half of Americans do not pay any federal income taxes because of exemptions given to those with dependents and limited incomes.
Federal income taxes are only a piece of the larger tax picture, however. Payroll taxes, which go toward Social Security and Medicare, eat up another 5.65 percent of wages. That rate returns to 7.65 percent if the payroll tax cut pushed by President Barack Obama isn’t extended past February.
State taxes are another factor and can vary widely, with rates ranging from as low as 3.4 percent in Indiana to 11 percent in Hawaii and Oregon, according to H&R Block’s Tax Institute. A handful of states, including Alaska and Florida, do not have an income tax.
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