Income Cuts? Sigh

So it should be unsurprising to you that growing up and transitioning to adulthood with all of the joys that entails comes with its fair share of difficult adjustments.

Things like knowing that you have to go to bed at a reasonable time for that charming 6 am wakeup and realizing that eating healthy food is a game changer in surviving the 8 to 5 drill. Or coming to the understanding that you really can’t party like you used to because after two beers and two hours at the bar your bed and some Netflix is way more appealing than downing that sickengly sweet flavored shot your luckily-still-in-college friend ordered you.

In addition to all of these fun little life adjustments, there is something that is most likely unique to me that has been a major hurdle and that’s income tax.

Now before you jump all over me for this consider that I have spent the past four years working at a tax-exempt institution.  

I got paid every cent for the hours I worked at John Carroll’s library and while I knew that income tax was a thing, I just never made enough to pay anything come tax season.

So here is my adjustment, my place of employment is no longer tax exempt. So this charming thing happens every paycheck, I get a large chunk of the money I earned taken away from me.

For instance, my last paycheck: I earned $1073, but $52 was taken away for Social Security and a whopping $120 was taken away for federal income tax.

And I know that Federal Income Tax is used for lots of good things like National Defense and Security and Federal programs to help the unemployed and for people who need healthcare and those are all good things but geeze. It’s no wonder there are so many of us living from paycheck to paycheck.

Now I am by no means arguing against the income tax, but losing that $XXX does put a strain on my ability to pay my bills and cover incidentals and I can’t imagine what it is like for people who work 40 hours a week plus overtime and not only get income tax and social security taken out of their pay but also get child support taken out. Can you imagine having to life off of the remains of that paycheck?

I’ve been very fortunate in that I got a great education and that I am on my way to starting a hopefully very successful and fulfilling career, but that doesn’t mean that they realities of a paycheck significantly less than what I earned becomes any easier. Maybe it’s time that the Federal Tax program was reevaluated so that people who worked hard to make their money didn’t get so much of it taken away. If you earn your money, shouldn’t you get to keep the most of it?

I don’t pretend to know everything (or really anything that in-depth) about tax brackets and taxable income, but I do know that I feel that hardworking people are entitled to the wages they earn. Perhaps that should be something that the Federal government looks into because I don’t know about you, but I’d love to keep more of my money.