I finished compiling our 2015 tax info in preparation for our meeting with our tax preparer tomorrow.
Coincidentally, someone posted a calculator that compares our tax burden under proposals from Trump, Cruz, Clinton and Sanders.
We’d pay less under Trump and Cruz and about the same under Clinton.
Our primary income is from Social Security, which puts our income at about 1/2 of the average in Mass. Our taxes would increase 15% under Sanders’ proposals.
Much of this cost would be allocated to providing free tuition, but here, students can already attend state college tuition-free if their grades and test scores are high enough.
The rub is that tuition is a tiny fraction of total college costs: about 11%. This means that we’d be paying for Bernie’s Brave New World for people who either haven’t worked hard in high school to get decent grades or who don’t even live here. That makes no sense to me as a practical New Englander.