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What will you do with your tax break?

Posted at 2:24 PM on December 29, 2010 by Bob Collins (9 Comments)
Filed under: Economy

Some professors at Yale and Cornell have started a Web site to protest tax cuts for wealthy Americans, the Associated Press reports today.

"Extending the tax cuts for the very wealthiest Americans is frankly unconscionable," Yale Law School professor Daniel Markovits told the AP today. "Donors can pledge their money to support the kinds of programs that will help families, create jobs, and set the country moving toward a just prosperity."

Their Web site, Give It Back For Jobs, is a fairly bare-bones calculator to reveal what your tax cut is, and then provides links to charities that it says can use the cash.

Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism for documenting how many people end up donating their tax cut, but the calculator is, nonetheless, a pretty interesting exercise that shows how much non-wealthy people are getting back, too.

An example (married filing jointly):

Adjusted Gross Income	Amount of tax cut
$100 million	$3,757,114
$1 million	$29,962
$100,000	$2,810
$75,000	$792
$30,000	$1,136
$10,000	$258

It's not entirely clear how many people will be eligible for these tax breaks, since we learned last year that almost half of all Americans don't pay any federal income tax.

What's your plan for the money? (Note: The calculations do not include a 2% reduction in the payroll tax.)

Comments (9)

Won't even cover the money I have to pay my now ex-husband each month.

Posted by Kassie | December 29, 2010 2:56 PM

I'll be saving it towards replacing our 17 year old Honda. I already increased my automatic bank transfer so I won't even notice the difference.

Posted by Justin Heideman | December 29, 2010 3:00 PM

Groceries, clothing and the like. My wife has been out of work for quite a while now, so it will ease the pressure a bit. So, I guess I'll use it to stimulate the economy. No need to thank me, I'm happy to do it. :-)

Posted by John P. | December 29, 2010 3:27 PM

That's a pretty interesting difference between $75k and $100k....

Posted by vjacobsen | December 29, 2010 4:02 PM

According to Yale Office of Public Affairs and Communication, Yale has a tax-free endowment worth .......... (drum-roll please)..... $17.3 billion.

Harvard holds a $26.4 billion tax-free endowment.

Let's start talking about the 21st Century instead of listening to tenured professors who are stuck in the mid-20th Century.

In our era HALF of all investments are held by tax-free entities. Read that as pension funds, IRA's and trusts like the Yale Endowment.

That is why we have owe $13 Trillion in federal debt, not because the people who pay taxes are getting a small break.

Posted by GregS | December 29, 2010 4:26 PM

I think my tax break just about covers my pay cut + healtch are co-pay increases, but I haven't done the math yet.

Posted by Joanna | December 30, 2010 6:45 AM

Well, considering my tax cut is far less than the making work pay tax credit that will not be offered this year, it doesn't look like I get a tax break.

Posted by Jennifer | December 30, 2010 9:17 AM

Not feeling sorry for most complaining about taxes. Do you have:

Cable TV - $600/year
Cell Phone - $900/year

Try cutting these and you will come out ahead, unless you make over $100k. If the latter is true, you probably don't qualify for financial pity.

Posted by kennedy | December 30, 2010 9:55 AM

High-speed Internet - $800/year.
(Lucky I don't smoke) Cigarettes - $2,474/year.

...and the list goes on.

Posted by GregS | December 31, 2010 4:30 PM