some tax numbers for 2018

[mellowtigger]

Another year gone by, so it's time to update my annual tax review.

• My 2016 income tax return shows total tax of $2,384 (line 39, form 1040A) with gross wages of $30.5K.
• My 2017 income tax return shows total tax of $3,048 (line 12, form 1040EZ) with gross wages of $33.8K. My taxes went up at a higher rate (+28%) than my income (+11%). I had a score of 720 on what appears to be a mostly-useless credit score system.
• My 2018 income tax return shows total tax of $3,938 (line 18, form 1040) with gross wages of $36.6K. Again, my taxes went up at a higher rate (+29%) than my income (+8%). Much of that higher income was the result of simply working temporarily more hours than usual. My credit score went up to 723, apparently based solely on a 1-year-older mortgage.

Are we tired of winning lower taxes yet?  At least I didn't get hit by the withholding problem.  I still got my usual refund. When economic trends continue like this, we lose the middle class to an ever-poorer population as we all (except the upper class) lose ground financially. Defying logic, since my salary is well below the local median wage, my income puts me definitively in the middle class for Minneapolis. Because it's a relative rating, my status should tell you how bad it is out there. "Middle class" ain't what it used to be.

Relatively poor people are having to pay for those corporate and upper class tax cuts.  Remember that promise, the so-called "trickle down economics" stimulus that never works?  Guess what?  It didn't work.  We got richer corporations and higher deficits, and the average citizen gets to pay for it.

And I have no idea whatsoever why each year I get a different federal tax form.