Don't Mess With Taxes

Photo by Mikhail Nilov

We're a week past Tax Day. Have you started working on your 2025 return?

I don't mean your actual return, of course. I do mean thinking about what went well or went off the rails this past filing season. Now is the time to consider changes you can make so that the process is smoother next year.

Shameless plug alert: You can find some tax planning ideas in my earlier posts Tax Day is done. Now what? Plenty! and Create a tax strategy that utilizes different tax baskets.

Income tax brackets and rates: Another good place to start is to find out where you stand in the tax collection process. Specifically, check out your tax bracket for tax year 2025.

The seven tax rates range from 10 percent to 37 percent, and are applied to income amounts that the Internal Revenue Service  adjusts, usually every fall, for the coming tax year. Those tax brackets led off the ol' blog's 10-part tax inflation series last October. You can find links to all the inflation components in the directory at the end of that Part 1.

Since we're all still recovering from April 15's tasks (it’s not just me, right?), and to save you some time, the 2025 income tax brackets also are shown below.

      
“I’m in the 24% bracket,” or not: When people look at the tax bracket income ranges, they typically find the one into which their annual income falls and claim that as their tax bracket.

For example, your yearly salary as a single taxpayer is $110,000. Good for you! That gross amount of income is in the 24 percent income tax range of $103,351 to $197,300. This is known as your marginal tax bracket.

But the income bracket and its tax rate that really counts is your effective tax bracket. As the name indicates, it’s the lower tax rate you really, effectively pay.

Another way to look at it is that your effective tax rate is the average rate of tax on all the dollars you make, not just the last ones that kicked you into a higher tax bracket.

Progressive tax system math: Your real, effective tax rate is thanks to the progressive nature of the U.S. tax system.

The tax code currently has the seven tax rates in the table shown above. Your money is taxed at the applicable different rates as your income moves up the brackets, rather than being taxed at the rate of the final bracket where all that money taken as a whole falls.

If you truly paid a 24 percent tax on the $110,000 annual income amount cited earlier, you’d owe the U.S. Treasury $26,400. Yikes!

But your tax bill isn’t that big.

The progressive tax system works to your advantage by taxing your first chunk of earnings at the 10 percent rate bracket, with the next amount taxed at 12 percent, then the next falling into the 22 percent tax bracket, and the final earnings ending up in into the 24 percent tax bracket.

Here’s a breakout of the tax dollars and amount of tax on each:

That adds up to a total tax of $19,443 or $6,957 less than if your total income was taxed at your marginal tax rate of 24 percent. Plus, the smallest amount of your earnings — $9,475 — actually falls into the 24 percent bracket.

The final tax math comes to an effective tax rate is around 17.68 percent.

Deductions and credits, too: But wait. You tax bill gets smaller.

The rudimentary tax bill example above didn’t account for the standard deduction you can claim, which in 2025 (Part 2 of the year’s inflation series) is $15,000 for the single filing status. That will get you to a lower taxable income amount.

And don’t forget about the other adjustments (such as various above-the-line deductions), and tax credits (such as the Child Tax Credit, educational tax credits, and the Earned Income Tax Credit) for which you qualify.

These tax breaks will in the end help drop your effective rate even more.

So, yes, you do start with your marginal tax rate, which is the highest tax percentage that applies to your last dollar of income, and is not really the tax rate you ultimately pay.

But after factoring in the various tax rates of our progressive tax system that apply to portions of your income, along with the tax breaks you can claim to lower your tax bill, what you finally pay when you file your tax return is an amount that is your lower effective tax rate.

You also might find these items of interest:

• 6 major life events that could affect your taxes
• A look at the wide range of how states tax their residents' income
• Most Americans favor raising taxes on higher-earners and big businesses

Advertisements

🌟 Search Amazon Tax Products 🌟
The text link above is an affiliate ad. If you click through and then buy a product, I receive a commission.