Nope. Gross was just shy of $200k, but after expenses and 1/2 Schd. SE writedown (remember, I'm self-employed) I missed the top bracket by quite a bit.

I had assumed "gross income" in my voting. These type of threads give me a headache as to trying to figure out wtf what everyone means based on a vague OP.

I am hoping I break 50k gross income this year. Finally got my clearance so I started full time a few weeks back. In all honesty I am betting I am close to 45k gross this year.

Poll should have been net income after wife and kids take their cut!

55k / year of college tuition takes a bite our of the old paycheck.

I would think "gross" or "AGI" would be a fair assumption and that, unless the original poster actually specified, that taxable income (edit: what the marginal "tax brackets" are computed from) would be less likely.

Then again, I would have incorrectly assumed the OP was looking for household income versus individual member income. To me, I would find the latter to be less relevant or useful.

If I am a stay-at-home dad (to our two dogs) and my wife makes $200k gross, is it really helpful if I post that I make $0?

PS - Joe, if you are still trying to guess, I did not vote.

I voted using my gross income because it made me feel better. After uncle sam had his way with my butthole and my wallet Id be down one more bracket.

Whoops.

Whoever set up this poll/thread is a fucktard. :D

Gross isn't a valid measure for people who are self-employed and have a lot of business-related expenses. Roughly 1/4 of my "gross" income was client reimbursement for hotels, airfare, equipment, and other costs directly related to the projects which I did for them.

If I were a corporate employee, then I would not have directly incurred these costs, and thus, I would not have been reimbursed for them. So when I compute my "Net" income, I'm not doing any funny business, I'm just reporting the bottom-line figure from Schedule SE, which is analogous to what a salaried employee would see on their W2. In other words, this is a fair apples-to-apples comparison.


Take a very simple example, and assume that I am a one-man car dealership. Every car that I sell costs me $24,000 to purchase from the manufacturer, and I sell it to the customer for $25,000. And assume that over the course of a year, I sell exactly 100 cars.

So, my gross receipts for the year was 2.5 million dollars, however 2.4 million of that went straight to the manufacturer who I bought the cars from, and only $100,000 of it went into my pocket. Would you expect me to report my "income" for the year as $2.5 million?

Same thing here, just on a smaller scale.

You read it here first guys, Joe is an auto dealer. RAPE HIM@$!

:vash: Thanks for making this even harder Joe.

These "Vote on your income!tax!etc!" threads are always annoying to interpret - perhaps AGI is a better metric?

These last few comments make me glad that I have a specific salary. It's easy to answer these questions. I suppose that is grossly outweighed by the fact that I am a slave to the man and have to sit in a cubicle with no windows all day.

Actually, the whole 1% thing (based on ordinary income) is kind of silly. The truly rich don't have ordinary income, because they don't have to work. They have estates, investments and trusts, on which they get to pay a reduced rate when those items generate income.

Most ordinary income 1%ers were not 1%ers for most of their lives and may not be in the future. They may have worked very hard for decades to build a business (that usually employs others). They may have had a particularly good year. Yet, the media makes these folks out to be the Devil incarnate.

Rant off.

So, where are we posting the junk pictures?

One of these days, I'd love to be able to engage in that discussion in politics. It would be either very, very fruitful - or certain people would do everything they could to derail it to party lines.

Pretty crowded at the top.

That's some serious ambition right there!!

Joe - Would your AGI accomodate what you are referencing in making it a more "oranges to tangerines" comparison?

I would think whatever your 1040 AGI was would be a reasonable number as it is in the ballpark of what most people consider their annual income or "what they make" (it includes investment income, SS, pension, etc) but is before lots of widely varying elements like mortgage deduction, charitable gifts, etc.

It would also accomodate whether you file single, married filing jointly, married filing single, etc.


Let's just scrap this whole thread, ban the OP and start over using 2011 1040 AGI (or estimate for those of us that have not filed 2011 returns yet). :brain: :party:

<--Has not filed yet. Finished taxes last week. Owe fed $380 and due refund from state of $390 so $10 to the good FTW.

8 out of 52 is a significant wedge of the pie.

an important thing to ask at this point is: why don't you drive a classier car, 1%ers?

Huh?

What I have described above simply makes my income equivalent to that of a person who is a salaried employee and receives a W-2. I don't see why this is confusing on controversial.

Those of you who are salaried employees and travel on company business- do you consider the cost of the airplane tickets and hotel rooms which you use to be income? Of course not. Your company pays for it and the cost is transparent to you. That's all I am doing here. By nulling out such expenses to generate AGI, I'm coming up with a number that is functionally equivalent to box 1 (Wages, tips & other compensation) of your W-2 form. This is how Schedule C (profit & loss from business) works. You start at the top with total gross receipts (lines 1a-1c) then you subtract out the cost of goods sold, travel expenses, and so forth, and you wind up with Net Profit, which you then enter into the exact same section of Form 1040 that you'd put your W2 earnings if you were a company man.

Honestly, folks. I'm not trying to pull any shenanigans here- this is how Sole Proprietorship accounting works, and it's not complicated. You take the total amount of money that you collected, subtract the amount of money you spent making the business operate, and what's left is your personal income. The fact that the "amount of money you spent making the business operate" happens to pass through your own personal credit card as opposed to a corporation's accounting department is immaterial.

150k in Upstate NY is significantly more disposable income than the same in SoCal or VA. I'd have to make at least double what I do now to live in the more expensive areas of the country.

I bought my house in 1986 for less than $75,000. Today, it's worth in the 140-150 thousand dollar range. That same house in Boston, LA or near DC would cost me 2-3 times that, easy.

I do. This is a fourth and fifth car for me.

Oh, wait...nvm