Tax proposal. Overtime (over 40 hours) wages made non-taxable.

[iconoclastNYC]

It seems that the tax system should reward hard work.

If you have to work two jobs to take care of your family you shouldn't be taxed on earnings on hours over 40 a week.

[BOSSHOG]

1. May I offer an addendum to your great idea?

Overtime would be calculated as anything over eight hours a day, not 40 hours per week. This drives businesses crazy.

[danalytical]

2. I love that idea

It would drive the wingnuts to vote for Democrats, because there is no way that Republicans would support a law like that.

[Warpy]

3. The tax system we have is dedicated to penalizing hard work

so forget that idea completely.

We penalize hard work by stealing OASDI overpayments and putting them into the general fund that income tax goes into, thus smacking most working people with double taxation. Overtime is taxed at a much higher rate than straight pay, another penalty.

We tax capital gains and other investment income at a far lower rate, meaning if you don't work for a living and just watch investment cash roll in, you're coddled by the system.

This country seems to feel people who support themselves through their work are prime suckers. They double tax, double charge, raid pensions, kill benefits, and laugh all the way to the bank as they grab all the money they suck out of workers.

All of this is happening as they cheat us out of living wages by fiddling with the CPI to bamboozle us into thinking the inflation we see everywhere is some sort of an illusion, a result of poor purchase choices.

The issue is WAGES. Any Democrat who doesn't campaign on it is a fool.

[iconoclastNYC]

9. A fool? Or a beneficiary of the system?

How many elected officials have a net worth under a million dollars?

We have to take our party back....seat by seat....we need more middle class people in Congress.

[blm]

4. That's a GREAT IDEA. You should send it to Finance and SBA Dems.

Really - it's novel yet perfectly simple and appropriate, at the same time.

[Sadie5]

6. Most unionized shops

already do this. Time and a half over 8 hours worked.

[blm]

8. Taxed or untaxed overtime? Her proposal was for nontaxation of overtime.

.

[BlooInBloo]

5. Won't the employer then be left holding the bag in some fashion?

[iconoclastNYC]

10. No.

Untaxed income is untaxed income. The employer would only have to worry about tracking overtime hours versus straigh times hours.....it would require minor changes to the payroll system.

[BlooInBloo]

12. Then explain this to me plz?

You say the employer won't be left holding the bag, this post says otherwise.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x894189#894264

(Yah, yah, it's a different overall subject, but the nuts n bolts are the same.)

Please reconcile for me?

[iconoclastNYC]

23. Reconcile for yourself.

[ieoeja]

27. I'll do it.

The other thread says, "employers can not deduct illegal wages as a business expense".

This thread says, "exempt overtime pay from taxation".

This thread does NOT say, "exempt overtime pay from taxation AND disallow deduction of overtime pay as a business expense".

[TygrBright]

7. Better idea: Employers pay ALL taxes on overtime for employees

Not just employers' share of FICA, but the amount that would normally be withheld for income taxes, too.

If you want to build healthy families in healthy communities the way to do it is not to keep people at work ever damn' hour they're not sleeping, it's to ensure that we have a healthy balance of work, home, and leisure time. Far too many of us are already spending every effing minute we're not asleep struggling to make a living.

If you're willing to work hard for 40 hours a week, you should be able to pay your mortgage, buy food, health care, transportation, clothing, etc., and still live a vibrant family and social life. Americans are too work-fixated as it is, our whole culture is screwy because we value work over family and community life.

curmudgeonly,
Bright

[iconoclastNYC]

11. Oh yeah that's better.

Increase the taxes paid for by big business. That will ensure passage. :sarcasm:

[TygrBright]

13. Given the microscopic amount of taxes currently paid by big business...

...it would have very little actual effect on their bottom line.

Might piss them off, though. Damn', better not do it, then.

Wouldn't want to piss them off.

Considering how much they do for us all. :sarcasm:, indeed.

contumaciously,
Bright

[slackmaster]

14. They'd compensate by cutting base pay across the board

Having the employer pay your tax is an illusion.

You always pay.

[TygrBright]

16. Or they'd just stop expecting people to work overtime at all

What would happen, I wonder, if Americans couldn't work overtime?

How loud would the demand become for base salaries/wages to reach a livable level?

How many people who have been silent, acquiescent sheep in allowing the virtual pay cuts over the last four decades, would finally holler 'enough'? The worth of wages and salaries in constant dollars has been plummeting at a frightening rate, but employers have been allowed to get away with it as long as workers could maintain or slightly increase net incomes by working far more than 40 hours per week.

We keep tinkering with the edges of the system, allowing the big employers who control the system to frame the issues and define "reasonable" and "possible" and "practical" and "pragmatic." The last time they had this much power, they did the exact same thing they're doing now: Defined the 40-hour work week, the minimum wage, etc., as "pie in the sky" and "unrealistic" not to mention apocalyptically bad for the economy.

We need to reclaim the power to define what is "possible," "right," and "reasonable." It can be done, it's been done before. And it should be nothing short of this: Anyone willing to work 40 hours a week should be able to support a family at a decent (not necessarily prosperous, but decent) standard of living. Workers should NOT have to work 60 hours a week to keep a shitty roof over their heads, families should NOT have to have two adults in the labor market for a total of 90 to 100 hours a week just to afford health care and transportation. It is perfectly possible to structure a functional, sustainable economy that does not make such demands.

WHY do we keep settling for less and dissipating our already-scarce energy and resources begging for crumbs?

irritatedly,
Bright

[slackmaster]

17. You're asking some tough and very good questions

I'm a well-paid person in Information Technology at a good company, and lately I feel like they're working me like a rented mule. I make enough money to get by and save for "retirement", have decent health care benefits, and for the most part good working conditions. Being a Systems Administrator is usually a thankless job because people never think about you when things are going well. I get called any time day or night to have people dump horrible, frustrating problems on me.

My home life is in constant disrepair. One of the reasons I'm planning to get married later this year (did 10 years previously) is so there will be someone to take care of all the home and personal stuff I don't have time for, like tending to my garden.

Because there is nothing close to a labor union or guild in my profession (and no real hope of ever having it), we're put in the position of competing against each other. I don't see a way for all of us to cooperate and fight for common interests. I'm sure a lot of my coworkers feel the same way.

[TygrBright]

20. You "don't see a way?" Rub your eyes and look harder!

You have the power to make a difference, you know. You really, really DO! I'm not saying you can do a Norma Jean tomorrow and start a movement and by next year the infotech field will be fully unionized and everyone's problems will be solved blah-blah-blah... Nor am I (I hope) making unreasonable demands of time & energy, as I know damn' well how scarce that is for today's workers. I don't mean you should do the equivalent of giving up a "normal life" to become a flaming crusader, either.

But the infotech field, especially at the mid-levels, has enormous organizing potential, just because infotech workers have so many informal networks, ways to communicate, etc. And everyone from the mid-high levels on down is grotesquely exploited in terms of working conditions, employer expectations, job security, etc. It's built up over nearly two decades as the field has passed the knee in its growth curve, and it's still a young field, much as "factory worker" was in the 1880s. If infotech workers started now, using all their networking and communications ability, the field could be organized in ten or fifteen years, maybe less.

A ten or fifteen year timeline discourages the hell out of us instant-gratification-conditioned Americans, but it's eminently doable. No one individual has to assume leadership responsibility, you don't even have to consciously "organize" or have a plan, just start laying the groundwork by demolishing assumptions like "there's nothing we can do about it," and by building a realization and consensus that the situation is unacceptable. As more and more people start sharing such ideas, leadership WILL emerge. A vision will coalesce. Factions will form and break up and re-form. Experiments will happen, you'll get slapped down and experience losses, but realize that you've survived them and, guess what, it really DOES make you stronger.

I hear what you say about getting married, too. I think it's beyond rational for people who care about each other to discuss what strategies will give them the best quality of life, what the costs and benefits will be, how they will each make their contributions, etc. The "traditional family" model didn't just evolve from religious and cultural norms, it made solid economic sense for a vast swathe of society who realized that they could greatly reduce cash expenditures AND increase their overall quality of life by having one partner maintain the domestic economy while the other maintained the cash flow. When that's a conscious, voluntary strategy on the part of all involved it can work extremely well. It's only when it's "the only option available" and the tasks are assigned solely based on rigid cultural criteria that it becomes oppressive.

Families and communities ARE healthier when stable households form around loving adult partnerships, maintaining a balance of workplace, domestic, and leisure activities. If we want our nation to survive our damaged environment and depleted natural resources, we need to be thinking in terms of sustainability, and restructuring an economy based around healthy family and community dynamics is the key to that.

It's more than possible to work our way out of the trap that unregulated economic Darwinism has reduced us to, we just have to acknowledge that no one will do it for us, and start being creative about doing it for ourselves.

urg... sorry if I went all preachy on you, you just pushed some buttons that have been really aching lately. Ignore if it works better for you.

diffidently,
Bright

[slackmaster]

21. I've found that sometimes the best thing to do is let things break

If I always respond to problems quickly and efficiently, the problems get masked and never fixed. It also cultivates a high expectation of performance on my part, which is stressful to maintain.

I've got my financial direction set so that at worst case (barring major health problems) I'll be out of the rat race in about 10 years, before age 60. That's better than my parents' generation did, though they had things like defined benefit pension plans that actually paid as promised, and long-term career tracks that were real. My generation has been duped with stock options and left to fend for ourselves in the long run.

Thanks very much for your thoughts, Bright.

[TygrBright]

22. Much wisdom there...

>>If I always respond to problems quickly and efficiently, the problems get masked and never fixed. It also cultivates a high expectation of performance on my part, which is stressful to maintain.<<

It takes most of us better than half a lifetime to learn that one.

OTOH, a little low-key prodding to help others "see" the problems doesn't necessarily hurt, either. :wink:

encouragingly,
Bright

[elehhhhna]

15. DING DING YOU WIN. Here's why:

OT p[ay laws exist so companies will hire more workers when there's more work--which is an appropriate goal. For your plan to really take off, we'll also need Uni Health Care to take the patriarchal burden of health insurance away from Corporations, as well as real enforcement of the definirion of exempt & nnon-exempt jobs.

[classics]

18. Better idea: raise the individual deduction to $15k per person.

This will reward those who choose to work for someone else AND those who choose to make thier own way through small business ventures.

[Hubert Flottz]

19. Great Idea!

I'll vote for you!

[RB TexLa]

24. So as an employer, instead of 20 people working 40 hours a week

I could chose to employ 14 work them 58 hours a week and save quite a bit on the matching FICA tax?

[ieoeja]

28. So make it exempt from income tax.

But not FICA, medicare etc. Then you have zero affect on the employer.

And you actually hit on something I prefer: lessening the hours required to reach overtime. The 40-hour work week dates back decades. Productivity during that time must be thousands of percentage higher, yet we still maintain the 40-hour work week as if that magic number is somehow necessary.

[porphyrian]

25. Who gets overtime?

Perhaps in the unionized North, or in specific fields, overtime is possible. However, in my experience in the South, companies would rather that you steal from them than get any overtime, especially government jobs. I think that if your suggestion were put in place, even fewer people might be able to work overtime. For those that can and do, however, I think that's a great idea.

[slackmaster]

26. I do

Due to a change in the tax codes (or interpretation thereof) that happened some time between 1996 and 2004, for the first time since I was doing construction work as a yoot I am non-exempt and get time and a half for hours over 40 in any particular week.

My base pay is about $70K per year. With OT I'm making closer to $80K.

[porphyrian]

31. "What is a 'yoot'?"

"Oh, excuse me your honor. Two youths."

[SoCalDem]

29. BushCo would consider that GREEDY..

:sarcasm:

They would consider YOU the reason why some other person cannot find that 3rd job :evilgrin:

[CCBeck]

30. Wouldn't work

You would need to make up that revenue somewhere which means either raising taxes on the base 40, which would really hurt salaried people like me. I think I like the idea of a larger personal deduction more. Good idea though!