$8,000 raise translates to $3,900 in my pocket.

Guv’mint really socks it to you huh.

Well half the people don't pay in so here I am

And the government gets to waste $4,000 more dollars on things that might win a vote! Obviously the government is better at spending money than you.

I love the examples of 'government funded' (tax payer funded) places receiving grants that they don't need so they have to spend it on fancy office chairs for their conference room they never use.

Something is incorrect. You received a yearly raise of $8000 paid out over the next year? The top tax bracket is 37% and state may be 7%. Your insurance won't change. Your 401k contributions won't change. Your SS and medicare contributions won't change unless you are under the max which in that case, you aren't in the 37% tax bracket.

Was it a bonus? Bonus will appear to be taxed very high because it all of sudden looks like your salary doubled or tripled, but it all evens out at the end of the year.

I did the math and even looked at my pay history pre/post raise. I'll take a closer look but $3900 was the exact real-world money increase that I take home.

No it wasn't a bonus.

I’m doubtful you passed a basic math class. Feel free to show your work.

Thank you for your service.

The next time I will drive on the road I will praise Pancake.

One possible example for taxable income of around $100K:

Federal tax bracket - 24%

payroll taxes - 7.65%

State taxes (using my state of Illinois for example) - 4.95

salary deferral to 401K (Roth) - 15%

Yeah, they get benefits from the social security and retirement savings later, but the wording in the OP seems to be simply looking at take home pay.

Now you can afford to max out your 401K or 403B. Winning!

Are you saying $3,900 after inflation or after taxes? As a SINK, your effective tax rate is probably in the neighborhood of 35% (29.6% is the average for the Federal Taxes and I'll add in about 5% more for the state). So 65% of $8000 leaves you with $5,200, but when you account for inflation, which is costing the average American household $717 per month. The average household is 3.13 persons, so it would cost the average single household about $229 a month, all other things being equal. So about $2,750 a year. That would leave you with about $2,450, which is still something more than most of us, whose wages are not keeping up with inflation. You are likely young and at an age where you would be seeing the rapid increases in wage growth.

The OP's numbers aren't far off.

I'm self-employed in NY state. Every incremental dollar I earn is subject to:

Federal Tax: 28% bracket

State Tax: 8%

Social Security: 15.3% (self-employed, I get to pay both halves)

So I keep less than 49 cents of every dollar I bring in.

I'm right around 100k. I'm not financially very literate. I just compared my paychecks pre-raise to my post-raise paychecks.

My per-pay period (2weeks) taxes went from $700 to $800. My "employee deductions" went from $735 to $800 per pay period. So all told my tax/deductions increased by $165 per pay period ($4200) due to the raise of $7900 per year.

My net pay increased by $150 per pay period ($3900/yr).

Not sure if they automatically increased my 401k contribution by the % my salary increased. Might be part of the equation.

Someone posting an innocuous and frankly boring anecdote and people trip over themselves to argue inconsequentials - this is so LRC.

Yea I agree, this is bogus anti govt post. Anyone who works and makes a high enough salary knows that roughy 40-50% of your raise will be gone and its not just tax. It could be a combination of things. The top tax bracket isnt 50% so you need to look at your stub. Theres a bunch of stuff in there. Are you contrib more to retirement? SS, medicare, benefits, it goes pretty quickly but guess what...like 99% of americans you will be using that money when you get old since nobody saves for medical. But 3900/8000? you left out some info.

Let's make it simple and look at federal and state income tax, ignore social security and any other small deductions that are actually benefits... So looking at money they're not ever going to see again. Someone who has no special training and gets a basic $25k job will use the $12,950 standard deduction to bring their taxable income down to $12,050. $10,275 of that will have 10% federal tax ($1027.50) and the remaining $1,875 is at 12% ($225). So someone making $25k is paying $1,252.50 of federal tax. So their taxable state income of the roughly 5% is based on about $10,750 ($537). So someone making $25k pays a total of $1789.50 of income tax, 7.1% of their income goes away as income tax.

Now let's look at someone who spent years studying/training to do something technical and even more time gaining experience to get to where they make $100k. They use the standard deduction to bring it down to $87,050 of taxable income. The first $10,275 is still at the 10% fed rate ($1027.50). There is $76,775 remaining. Then the next $31,499 is taxed at 12% ($3779.88). There is $45,276 remaining. All of this is at the massive tax jump of 22% ($9,960.72). So this is $14,768.10 federal tax. $72281.90 is taxable at state level, so another $3614 is paid to state tax, bringing the total income tax paid to $18382 tax paid. So they're paying 18.382% of their income to income taxes.

One person didn't do anything to get a good job, pays $1,789.50 in income taxes during the year, the other person worked hard to get to a point where they have to pay $18,382 of income taxes. And yet they both have an equal political vote on how that tax money is spent.

Nobody supports a government wanting to cut spending, so don’t expect this to change

That includes republicans who are happy to cut taxes, but never spending.