Coqui In The Buff, Eyeball Unmolested, Sparkling Driveway

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

4/29/23

 

Aloha Family!

 

We've definitely had our April showers this month (another 4+ inches this week), but of course here we

Kona Beachmobile

already (always) have the May flowers to go with them.  Another sign of spring has been the additional cruise ships making stops.  We always have a visit on Wednesdays, when the island cruise based in Honolulu comes to town.  However, in the spring we also get ships that are repositioning from their southern winter routes to their northern ones for the summer. This week we had three extras -- one on Saturday, another on Tuesday, and one on Thursday. This makes the town merchants very happy, of course.  It's such a far cry from a couple of years ago during Covid when the waterfront area was basically a ghost town.  It also makes for a very picturesque view of our bay.

 

This next item will convince you that I've lost it and may be ready for the rubber room.  I am very determined to keep coqui frogs out of our property, and I've become an avid and accomplished hunter.  This past week one tried to move into a large pot near our front door and I finally nailed him after an

Be Thankful No Selfie

initial difficult time pinning down where he was.  When coquis move into a new territory they tend to be timid about singing at first, and this one would stop just about the time I got close enough to spot him.  He finally got bold enough to sing a little too long, and my hand of doom ended his career.  Well, a few days later another one started up in the front of our house, but further down our path toward the garden.  As soon as I'd rush outside at the beginning of his song he'd shut up.  However, after a few days he got more cocky and I was getting closer each time he sang.  Then the other night when I got up to use the bathroom I heard him going for extended periods.  I got my headlight and my flip flops and went out to the garden path.  Please note, I had nothing else on because I didn't want to take the time to get dressed (besides, it was a warm night and the area where I was wasn't visible to anybody who might be passing by).  Sure enough, he started chirping and I zeroed in on him pretty quickly.  He was soon in the freezer, I was back in my warm bed, and it was blissfully quiet.

On Tuesday I saw my retina doctor and my eyeball was deemed not to need a shot.  We're going to wait two weeks and then I'll get one for sure.  That will last me until we return from our trip.  Two months is my current minimum interval, and it seems to be creeping up towards three months.  Yay!!  Speaking of shots, Karen and I had our additional Covid boosters on Thursday.  This will give our immune systems enough time to whomp up the Covid antibodies before our trip.  I had a pretty significant reaction for about a day, mostly feeling blah and achy.  Karen had the blahs, but she also had a very sore arm.  Still, these symptoms beat the heck out of the disease itself.

 

No golf this week, though we did visit the gym on Tuesday.  We canceled the golf because it rained the whole day before and it would have been just too wet and soggy.

My big house project for the week was to powerwash our driveway in preparation for re-coating it next week.  It had been quite some time since I had done this and it turned out to be quite a chore.  I've got my handyman scheduled for next Tuesday to help me do the painting, but I'm a little worried about the weather.  The coating has to have several hours drying time before it is rain proof.  We'll start very early and hope it stays dry long enough to be ok.  We do this with paint rollers on poles and it usually takes a couple of hours.  This coating not only makes the driveway look nice, it really helps in keeping down the mold and mildew around the house.  

Ok, that's the news for the week.  I also had a techno-woe that required way too much time and frustration to solve, but I'll spare you the details.  Stay well, enjoy your Spring.

Popping Peacocks, Putting Birdies

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

4/22/23

 

Aloha Everyone!

 

This was a pretty quiet week here.  Our yearly onslaught of Spring Break tourists is winding down, Merrie Monarch is over, and aside from a "cold" front that moved through the state early in the week bringing another .5" of rain, the weather has been uneventfully nice despite some afternoon and evening showers.  Our pool hit 84d degrees, which is our age-adjusted sweet spot and so we managed to work out most days.  

 

My main house projects have been to begin our month-before-the-trip preparations, and to repair our pool robot cleaner. The preparations are mostly outside trimming and spraying, timed now so I can do them again right before we leave. The pool cleaner repair is something I've done before when it suddenly seems to get lazy, because a leaf or other debris that gets hung up in the inner mechanism, a part wears out, or there is something lowering the suction pressure at the pump.  I've become very good at taking this thing apart and replacing pieces that routinely wear out.  I can find the parts online and they generally aren't very expensive.  I replaced several things this week but that didn't completely solve the problem, so then I suspected there was something lowering the suction. This is the type of robot cleaner that works when the pool pump sucks water from the pool and filters and heats it before sending it back to the pool. The flowing water drives a little turbine inside the cleaner and that powers its movement. I did a quick search for "how-to" videos on pool equipment adjustments and I found one explaining how to adjust the vacuum.  Closing and reopening the main valve seems to have improved things a lot.  Perhaps something was partially clogging the valve and the sudden surge dislodged it.  I'll keep you posted.

 

Karen and I played golf on Thursday at Makalei, along with her golfing buddy.  It was a pretty good round

Don't Pop The Peacock!

for me, much better than the previous outing.  Even though my score wasn't much different, I felt like I was playing a lot better.  I got a couple of bogies and even one birdie!  The birdie was on a par 3 hole. My t-shot felt pretty good, but I lost track of the ball.  However, we found it -- about 6 feet from the pin!  And darn if I didn't make that putt!  Another highlight was when one of Karen's fairway shots hit our friend's ball, bounced onto the green, and rolled up close to the hole!  Billiards!  A final example of why this was a fun round of golf was when I hit a beautiful chip shot that looked like it was going to land right near the hole -- but instead came down on the butt-end of a peacock who had suddenly decided to stroll across the green.  He wasn't harmed, thankfully, but boy did he jump!

That's about it. Hope you're all enjoying Spring!  Stay well, ignore the crazies.

Puddles, Merrie Monarchs, Guests

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

4/15/23

 

Aloha All!

 

Another wet week here. This is getting old, though it has its upsides -- I've been able to switch off my garden irrigation system for several cycles and I haven't had to add any water to our pool for many weeks now.  Unfortunately, our photovoltaic system doesn't have many photons to convert to volts, so we've been cutting into our reserves. Twice this week I even had to turn on our electric backup heating for our hot water so our showers would be at least lukewarm, and that uses even more reserves.  I'm confident, though, that in no time at all we'll be complaining about how relentlessly sunny it is and how badly we need rain....

A major feature of this week was hosting a long-term friend who is visiting from the mainland.  This is the woman who used to live here for over 30 years and then moved to Portland because her husband had health issues. I just realized this may be somewhat confusing because we have another friend in almost the same predicament, and both now live in Portland. The other friend, though, was a snow bird who never lived here on a permanent basis.  At any rate, we really enjoyed having her stay with us for a few days.  A

Hula Kahiko

highlight was sharing dinner at Four Seasons resort up north one evening. She is now over on the east side of the island, where she attending the annual Merrie Monarch Hula Festival in Hilo.  This is the World Cup/Super Bowl/World Series of hula, in which groups (both male and female) from all the islands and even other parts of the world perform and compete in honor of King David Kalakaua. Kalakaua is credited with saving hula as an art form after it had been severely repressed by Christian missionaries in the 1800's.  It is certainly alive and well today, and each year it evolves and gets more complex, expressive, and demanding. Two major categories of competition involve "hula kahiko" (old style performed to a chant and only a drum) and "hula 'auana" (modern, post-contact, performed with instruments and in more modern dress).  Both are fascinating to watch.  This is the first year since Covid that live-audience tickets have been available and they sold out almost immediately. 

 

Speaking of our ultra-posh resorts along the Kona coast, the demand is apparently strong enough that two more are opening:  the re-built Kona Village next to the Four Seasons, and the Auberge, which took over the Mauna Lani further north. These comfy accommodations start at a mere $1200 per night and go up to  $3000+ for a bungalow at the Kona Village. Sorry, airport parking for your private jet isn't included....

 

No golf this week, but we did work out at Planet Fitness yesterday. We were pleased to have the place almost to ourselves.  However, after lunch at one of our favorite Thai restaurants (TK Noodle), we stopped at Safeway on our way home.  Absolutely jammed. Karen tells me this is normally the case, and so I made a vow to avoid going on Fridays at all costs in the future.

 

That's about it.  Hope you are seeing some signs of spring.  If so, enjoy.  If not, take comfort in knowing it must be just around the corner (right?).  Take care.

Lazy Lava, Snowball Blooms, 400 Frogs

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

4/8/23

 

Aloha Everyone!

 

Karma bit me again this week.  As you recall, last time I bemoaned your lousy mainland weather compared with ours.  Well, within hours of sending my email it began to rain and our usual friendly sun didn't reappear until Tuesday.  By then we had accumulated over 2" of rain and nearly lost our tans. Our volcano summits got more snow, adding to the amount that was already there and making this the most we can remember since living here.  Most of the week it has been overcast and rainy in the afternoons, and our recent solar gains have evaporated. Go ahead and gloat.

I might as well go for broke and really ask for it by reporting on our still-quiet Kilauea volcano.  It has remained essentially shut off since the beginning of last month. The lava lake in the summit caldera has crusted over, and the usual earthquake activity signifying magma moving around has dropped to non-eruption levels.  Show's over folks, move along.  Now, just wait --all three of our active volcanoes will erupt and set new records of devastation. As I've said before, Kilauea is one of the most active volcanoes in the world, and this quiet period is the exception and not the rule.

 

Waking Up

One of our signs of Spring here is the reappearance of plumeria blossoms. In the fall the trees lose most of their leaves and flowers and remain bare for about 3 months. When they begin to wake up, flowers appear on the branches before the leaves, kind of like dogwood trees.  For a few weeks the trees look like colorful snow balls.  Unlike other flowering trees, though, the plumeria will continue to bloom for the next 9 months.  This snowball period is just beginning now, and it is one of my favorite times here.

 

This week we got two pieces of good medical news.  First, I peed in a cup and had some more blood sucked for a follow-up test to check my vitamin B12 level.  All good, though in the low range.  Karen saw an orthopedic doctor about a problem she's been having with one hip.  We both foresaw the all-too-common geezer hip replacement coming, but that wasn't the diagnosis at all.  Instead, she has a case of bursitis exacerbated by mild arthritis, treatable without slicing and dicing.  Definitely good news.

 

With our rain and warmer weather, the coquis are getting active and noisy again.  Being the semi-compulsive guy that I am, I keep track of my catches -- dates, locations, sex.  I'm nearing my 400th catch over the past couple of years.  My neighbor has 462.  I can't imagine how loud and obnoxious it would be with nearly 900 more frogs nearby! 

We played golf on Thursday at Makalei.  Not my best round, but I did manage to get four bogies.  I console myself for my overall high scores with the realization that if you calculate the cost per shot, I'm playing practically for free.

 

Ok, that's it for now.  Stay well and warm.  And remember as you contemplate the world scene that there is humor even in the Theater of the Absurd....

Techno-Jinx, Techno-Triumph, Travel Plans

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

4/1/23

 

Aloha Family!

 

April 1st! Can you believe it?  Springtime is here!  Well, except for those pesky little snowflakes and freezing temperatures.  I recall Spring in Ohio as a nice time when the tulips and daffodils bloomed, as did the forsythia and lilacs and flowering trees.  Of course, that was also the time of sudden frosts, tornadoes, and horrific thunderstorms.  Hmmmmmm...

Well, remember last week when I said that all my techno-toys were working again, and that I was afraid saying so would jinx things?  It took only a couple of days before the jinx kicked in and my receiver went on the fritz again -- same issue as before, it suddenly stopped streaming video to the t.v.  This time I went right for the fix -- re-initializing (re-booting) the system -- and again it worked.  However, this means I have an unreliable unit that shouldn't do this, given that it's only 2 years old.  Naturally, this happened the second time just 2 days after the warranty expired!  I decided to call anyway to see if I could get some help (of course, at the moment there is no problem).  I first tried Costco, where I bought the receiver, but they couldn't help me and referred me to Yamaha Customer Service.  I called, but their talk-to-a-human hours have been cut severely and the phone message suggested going online for a "chat."  I did, but the agent (maybe an AI?) was stumped and "escalated" my complaint to another level, one where someone was to call me on the phone, sometime in the next decade.  I was surprised and pleased when I got a call a couple of hours later and was able to explain the situation to a very knowledgeable and personable geek.  He was sympathetic but stumped, other than agreeing it must be a firmware problem on the hdmi board of the receiver.  Then for the good news.  He said Yamaha would extend my warranty and cover one future repair if it happens again!  The only downside is that I'll have to ship it to Honolulu because there is only one authorized repair place in the whole state of Hawai'i.  Yamaha will cover return shipping, but I'll have to shell out for the first trip. I'll wait until it fritzes again, so that the repair place can hopefully locate what's wrong.

Banned From The Pool!

Balancing the problem with the receiver, I managed to fix the umbrella lights that stopped working after the second dunk in the pool.  I forgot to mention last week that I had located replacements online for the solar panel and battery pack that go on the top of the umbrella.  These arrived on Wednesday and work fine.  The cost wasn't too bad, much less than a new umbrella, and all I had to do to was screw the parts into the top of the umbrella.  Now, if I can just keep the umbrella out of the pool everything will be great.  

We've finalized our travel plans for the rest of this year and we've also made preliminary arrangements for early next year.  As I've mentioned before, in May/June we'll be back in southern France and northern Italy.  The France part is primarily to see two expat friends (the current brauhaha about retirement age hopefully won't interfere much). Most of the trip will be in northwest Italy (Piedmont, Turin, Genoa) and also in Umbria and Tuscany.  We've been to Italy several times before, but not to all the places on this year's itinerary.  We'll be entirely on our own, renting a car in Marseilles and returning it in Rome.  In the fall we've signed up for another tour with ElderTreks, the company we used for visiting the Caucuses.  This time we'll be going to the Balkan countries of Macedonia, Albania, and Bulgaria.  Should be interesting, as these three have unique cultures with long and important histories.  We'll stop in Ohio on our way to visit friends.  Finally, in the spring we may finally get to go to Ethiopia.  This will be another ElderTreks tour, and we are really hoping that the political situation stays calm -- however, we've made multiple attempts for 50 years to go to Ethiopia and something has always prevented us from achieving our goal.  We'll see what happens this time.

On the home front, we did our usual Tuesday workout and on Thursday Karen played golf.  I opted to go to the driving range and practice green instead.  We drove separately and I drew the short straw to go to Costco afterwards for grocery shopping.  My big house project this week was to trim back a clump of bamboo that was getting out of hand.  This started as cutting just one stalk that had fallen over, but that led to another, to another, to another -- until the pile of cuttings was exhaustingly large.  Fortunately our gardener came for his weekly visit a couple of days later and hauled it all away.  We planted this clump shortly after we moved in to screen the view of the house next door.  It has done that, and also keeps us supplied with garden stakes, but this variety can send up stalks 30-40 feet and they lean outward toward the house, other trees, and into our neighbor's yard.  About every 6 months or so I have to whack off the stalks that are leaning too much.  Fortunately this is a "clumping" variety of bamboo, so it doesn't spread all over like some varieties do.

 

Ok, that's it for this week.  Stay the course and turn down the volume.

 

Needles, Blood, Silicone, & Smoke

[Note: This is another blog based on my weekly emails to my family on the mainland.]

3/25/23

 

Aloha All!

 

I don't have any hard evidence, but I wouldn't doubt that we've had a real uptick in weather refugees from California visiting us here in Hawai'i..  Definitely a challenging winter there lately, and of course in a lot of other places on the mainland, too.  No great challenges here -- unless you count deciding on which pair of shorts to wear today...

 

A lot has happened since I wrote last.  A week ago Tuesday I saw my retina doctor and, as expected, I got an eyeball injection.  There was definite edema buildup but we caught it early and since then my acuity in the right eye has improved considerably -- still not great, of course, but back to the best I can expect, about 20/100.  The good news is that the steroid cream I was using to get rid of the thingy on my thigh didn't increase my eye pressures as I feared it might.  It sure did the trick on my leg, though, and that spot is finally healed.  In other medical news, I got my routine blood work done last week and yesterday I saw my crackerjack internist to review the results.  I had already seen the report and compared it to my previous tests, though, because the lab sends them to me online. Everything seems good, including the PSA (prostate) test and the CRP test (coronary inflammation marker).  I know I complain about my doctor but I do approve of this 6-month routine blood analysis because it should catch problems early -- a very good thing for geezers.

 

On the home-front, my main project was to clean and reseal the flagstone decking around our pool.  This natural stone is very attractive, but it requires regular maintenance to keep it that way.  I'm afraid I let this slip a bit too long, so it was extra work this time to get it back into shape.  First, I sprayed the whole thing with a bleach solution to kill moldy spots, then I power-washed the entire surface, applied another bleach spray, and finally sprayed on a silicone sealer.  Besides being tedious, this job required repositioning most of the lanai furniture a couple of times to treat underneath.  Fortunately the weather cooperated over the several days it took to do the job and I now declare it done.  If I reapply the silicone every 9 months or so it shouldn't require any other maintenance. Whew!

On the techno-front, our new credit card account seems to be doing fine -- no new hacks.  I got nearly all of our automatic payments changed to the new card, and while I was at it I changed any that would allow it to Pay Pal.  This way if the card is compromised again, it will be easier to change the Pay Pal link to the new card account, rather than changing each company.  I also like the fact that my card # isn't on file with each merchant, some of whom might have less than the best security arrangements.  Pay Pal is a juicy target for ne'er-do-well hackers, of course, but I'm sure Pay Pal has extremely high security to protect themselves and my info.  There are other payment services besides Pay Pal, but I already had an account and I often use it for quite a few online purchases. Also going well so far are my sound system receiver and my new (old) phone.  The phone looked almost brand new -- I couldn't see any scratches or marks on the outside at all.  And so far it is working perfectly, including the sound features that the original had problems with.  I used the Samsung transfer utility to copy all my old apps, data, and settings to the new phone fairly quickly.  I did have to log in to a number of apps again, though, and a few settings didn't transfer.  Also, I had to transfer the carrier sim card from the old to the new phone, but the service registered the new device automatically and in a few minutes I could make and receive calls and texts, as well as switch to cellular data if I wanted to, or when I was away from our home wifi.  For now I've opted not to go the "e-sim" route until the techies implement a way to make it easier to switch e-sims between devices. I've got 90 days to return the phone if there is a problem, but so far it has been great.  I will probably jinx things by saying this, but at this moment all my techno-toys are working!!

 

Makalei Fan Gallery

Karen and I worked out on Tuesday, and played 16 holes at Makalei on Thursday with Karen's golf buddy.  I did ok, with some rather amazing shots but also a lot of mediocre ones.  Karen did very well, including getting a zero-putt birdie on a par three hole.  We've now added a couple of new Kon-a-Lago rules:  on fairway shots, anything less that 20 feet doesn't count; and on greens, if the ball hits the pin it's "in."

 

Today is my Quitting Smoking Anniversary. I finally managed this in 1994, after smoking for 40 years.  Here's some fun math.  I started smoking when I was 10 (the evil influence of my two older sisters).  It has now been 28 years after quitting.  28+10=38.  That means in two years I will have been smoke free for as long as I smoked.  Given that I spent 1/2 of my life puffing away, I should be grateful that so far only a moderate-to-severe case of emphysema is the result.  Note the "so far."

Ok, off for our usual routine of market and beach breakfast picnic.  Hang in there. Winter will end someday....

Tax Tips in Troubled Times

Here We Go

Way back in 2011 I offered some tax tips to help people cope with the angst of filing season (see Tax Tips for Tea Time, 3/1/11).  That seems so long ago and so much has happened in the intervening 12 years that I thought I'd update my advice as we approach this year's deadline.  As noted in the title, this year we are dealing with this chore in the midst of a congressional melt-down over the debt ceiling, debates about lowering/increasing taxes for those who are financially challenged, raising/lowering taxes on the financially fortunate, cutting/increasing government spending on health, education, climate, and military programs, etc., etc., etc.. And since we now live in the age of confrontational, oppositional, post-factual, and post-civility politics, all this is at a volume almost guaranteed to land the average tax payer in scream therapy.

So, what's changed in the past 12 years? Rather than try to present a comprehensive and mind-numbing answer to that question, I'll focus on two aspects of taxes that seem most pertinent: refunds and effective (versus marginal) tax rates.

Refunds

Back in 2011, roughly 76% of tax payers got a refund averaging just under $3000.  That amounted to a total of about $319 billion, which was 34% of the total collected from individual returns. Even now, with inflation over the past 12 years, that's a LOT of money.  At that time, I pointed out that the "windfall" of a refund was actually just a return of people's own money, refunded to them after a year of it not being used for rent, medical bills, groceries, and occasional fun things.  I suggested that anyone in the group receiving $3k or more who believed that taxes were too high should have realized the contradiction of willingly over-paying taxes they thought were excessive on the one hand, and giving the government what amounted to an interest-free loan of $319 billion on the other.

So, what's changed in the last 12 years?  Not much, actually. According to IRS statistics for the intervening years, the average refund over the past 12 years has been about $2800 with the exception of a dip to $2549 for the Covid year 2020 and a rebound to $3252 in 2022. The variation in the average refund amount has been quite small, generally + or - about $250, and the percent of filers receiving refunds has been consistently about 75% , +/- 2%.  In short, most of us have continued to contribute generously to the interest-free government loan that averages about $320 billion each year.

There are two aspects of the yearly trend that have, indeed, shown changes.  First, the percent of returns being filed electronically has risen steadily from 77% in 2011 to 90% in 2022.  I suspect this reflects the growing incorporation of internet technology into many aspects of our increasingly online lives.  More evidence of this is the proportion of refunds that were electronically processed via direct deposit, which has grown from 72% in 2011 to 91% in 2022.  This can definitely speed up the refund process, since it is less reliant on human intervention and physical systems that require time and resources.  The IRS says that about 90% of refunds are issued within 3 weeks after a return is accepted.  However, the other 10% can take much longer, as I've personally experienced for the past couple of years. If there is something missing, incorrect, or if your return is selected for verification (as mine was this year) you will have to wait longer, maybe weeks or months longer (see Saving to Invest).  I submitted my return this year on Feb. 1, and received confirmation that it was "accepted" within a few hours.  My refund is much less than the average (I'm proud to say), but I'd still like to have it. It is now March 15 and my return is still "being processed," even after taking an extra step of providing validation information.

The main way to reduce your refund and keep more money in your pocket during the year is to adjust your withholding via Form W-4.  Another way, for those of us who make quarterly estimated payments, is to make these as accurate as possible, even adjusting them during the year if circumstances change.  Finally, for those who are required to make minimum withdrawals from an IRA, the percent you elect to be withheld can be changed with each withdrawal if necessary.

Although a tax refund can feel like a windfall, it most certainly isn't.  Some argue that overpaying forces them to save money during the year, and that they might not do so otherwise.  This may be true, but there is a hidden price for this forced savings.  Here's an idea that will accomplish the savings and even earn you some money.  Divide the usual amount of your refund by 12, then set up an automatic deposit of that amount each month into a bank savings account, kind of like a Christmas fund. On a specified date take the money plus interest and rejoice at your "refund!"

Marginal Versus Effective Tax Rates

A lot of confusion surrounds the question of how much we actually pay in income taxes.  The tax total in dollars is clear, but how that total is arrived at isn't.  An example of the confusion appeared in a Letter to the Editor recently published in my local newspaper.  The author bemoaned the high tax rate levied on those with incomes greater that $539,000, which placed them in the 37% tax bracket. This forced them, according to the writer, "to pay 37% of their incomes in taxes." 

The confusion here is between a taxpayer's marginal versus effective tax rate.  U.S. income taxes are "progressive," which means that income up to a certain point is taxed at given rate, and income above that level is taxed at a higher rate.  The rates for each increasing portion of a person's income are the marginal rates, the maximum of which was 37% for 2022.  But only the amount above $539,000 would be taxed at that rate -- the income up to that point would be taxed less.  Dividing a person's total tax bill by their total income yields the effective tax rate for that person, the true bottom line -- the proportion of their income that went to taxes.

The difference between the two rates can be dramatic, and a very strong case can be made that it is the effective rate that should be the focus of debates over whether income taxes are too high.  For example, Business Insider presents data for the 2020 tax brackets that shows for the most common bracket of 22% (incomes from $50k to $75k), the effective rate was 7.2%.  For the next most common bracket of 24% (incomes of $100k to $200k), the effective rate was 10%.**  A similar analysis by The College Insider indicated that using 2022 data, a person with an income of $60k (22% tax bracket) would have an effective rate of 9.9%. Finally, a Tax Foundation analysis of IRS data shows that the average effective rate for all taxpayers in 2020 was 13.6%.  For those in the 37% bracket (incomes greater than $539k, averaging $1.7 million) the average effective rate was 26%. 

Effective rates have not remained the same over the past 12 years, but the changes have been less than you might think. A highly-touted tax reform bill that was enacted in 2017 changed the marginal values and adjusted the income cutoffs for some rate brackets with the goal of lowering taxes.  This did indeed lower the effective tax rate for taxpayers in all income categories, as documented by the Tax Foundation.  But their data show that the magnitude of the effect was 1.5% or less for nearly all income categories for 2018-2020).  For the average taxpayer this amounts to a reduction of $250, and a reduction of $69 for those in the most common bracket (Business Insider).  Many people spend more than that in a year for mocha lattes.

Now, we can certainly argue whether the effective rates are too high (or too low), but at least we're focused on the right thing. So, one tip for 2023 is the same as it was in 2011:  concentrate on what your tax rate actually is, not misleading sound bites about marginal values. 

Bottom Line

In summary, I think there are two main points to be taken from the analyses above.

First, the promise of a refund is perhaps the only positive thing about filing your income taxes each year.  But it can't negate the fact that a refund is money that perhaps you shouldn't have parted with in the first place, and there is a hidden cost to what may seem like a "windfall."

Second, the question of how our tax bill is calculated is ambiguous enough to provide politicians with an abundance of opportunities for puffery and hyperbole. The bottom line provided by focusing on effective tax rates is a much more down-to-earth place to begin a discussion of raising or lowering the tax burden. 

Happy filing!

______________________________________________

*I've updated the figures from those given in my original blog using more recent data from the IRS archives.

** To calculate the effective rates the middle income in the tax bracket was used (e.g., $150k for the $100k-200k bracket), which was divided into the average tax paid by people in that bracket.