Hey, it’s time for my now-annual blog post on tax incidence! Graphs below…
The payroll tax cut ended this year, and as a result, total tax burden is marginally up:
Payroll taxes are back to normal, but federal and state income tax rates are down a bit:
Cumulative view:
State tax burden is down slightly, due to lower income and property tax rates:
Last year I predicted that due to the expiration of the payroll tax cut, my total tax burden would have just about tied my all-time high. However, this didn’t happen, because our tax code is weird: marriage, the mortgage interest tax deduction, local property tax deduction, and the student loan interest deduction do good things for people who can take advantage of them. I think they are absurd, but until the rules are changed this is the tax code we have.
Given how wrong I was last year, I don’t think I’ll make any predictions for 2014.