Early last year, Obama and Congress passed a law raising out paychecks by taking out less money in the federal income tax. Many people at Wal Mart I work with were very happy.
Now, these same people are seeing the result of these changes. Their federal income tax refunds are much smaller than they had hoped for. For most of the people I talked to, single people with no kids, they are getting less than half than they are used to and they are pissed. These are people who don't make a lot of money and they count on the refund. One guy was planning on renting an apartment with his check and now he can't.
For me, I haven't done my taxes yet, But I know I will pay in a lot because I didn't have very much money taken out of my Wal-Mart check. And the thing is, were not given a choice.
So, thanks, Obama and Congress, thanks for helping out the poor. They were not impressed with your "help"
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Actually, you do have a choice. You can fill out a new W-4 and ask to have an additional amount withheld each month (there is a box on the form for that). One of my co-workers did that right after the new tax tables came out in March. It's unfortunate that Wal-Mart's HR department did not explain the options and implications to their employees.
ReplyDeleteWal Mart didn't and the Oama administration did not do it. They, the Obama administration, said that this was a tax cut when in fact, it was not.
ReplyDeleteIt was a tax cut, Dan. The problem is that your coworkers don't know how to save money. They just took the extra money and blew it, not thinking ahead. We saved a little each week, and now we are still above water (barely) even though my wife has been out of work for six months.
ReplyDeleteAnd we are still getting a good chunk on our returns.
Capper, how can you call it a tax cut? Reread your post.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little bit surprised that you are complaining about the federal government giving people more of their money to manage on their own. If the government felt that Americans need to increase their rate of savings and decided to withhold more money from each paycheck in order to give them a bigger refund later, you would be complaining about the government collecting the interest on that money and taking a bite out of workers' monthly budgets.
ReplyDeleteThe initiative in March was a stimulus measure. It was meant to put more money into the economy at a time when it was desperately needed, rather than defer that consumer spending until tax refunds were received a year later.
And there was a tax cut component to the measure, for individuals and married couples below a certain income threshold. If someone has more than one job, the combined income may be above the threshold, even though each individual employer treats withholding on the basis of that particular job only. I suspect this is where a lot of Wal-Mart employees got burned, since many of them work multiple jobs.
I'm not saying what the government did was wrong, per se. I like the bigger paychecks and smaller refunds.
ReplyDeleteWhat I object to is how it was handled. The government said they were getting a tax cut when it was really a deferment. Many of the employees at the wal-Mart I work at aren't even high school graduates, proably more than 50%. They didn't understand what the ramifications were going to be in the future, though I tried to tell them at the time. And you have the politicians saying it was a tax cut when it was not, you have a lot of pissed of people now. Especially people who are single.
Actually, I made a mistake on my taxes. I was going to redo them this afternoon so that it was legible and found I missed a $2400 credit.
ReplyDeleteSo not only did we make more money during the year, our refund is going to be around $1000 higher than last year, even though we brought in less money and some of it was not taxed. That's change I can believe in!
If memory serves me right, you claimed that you lost money when the Bush tax cuts went into effect. But yet when Obama comes in, you have more coming back?
ReplyDeleteI am glad you got more money back. Maybe you can donate money to the Barrett for Gov campaign or a Charlie Sykes repellent.
LOL.
ReplyDeleteI believe Sykes repellent is Holy Water.