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Finance and capital markets
Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 4
Lesson 1: Personal taxes- Basics of US income tax rate schedule
- Tax deductions introduction
- AMT overview
- Alternative minimum tax
- Estate tax introduction
- Tax brackets and progressive taxation
- Calculating state taxes and take home pay
- Marriage penalty
- Married taxes clarification
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Tax deductions introduction
Understanding what a tax deduction is. Created by Sal Khan.
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I didn't understand what is the difference between tax deduction and tax credit.(15 votes)
Andrew is right. Another way to see it is this:
For example....
a) You have calculated your taxes and you owe $8,000. But wait a minute! You uave a $1,000 tax CREDIT and you apply it to your FINAL bill is= $8,000 minus $1,000 equals $7,000 check to the IRS. You are very happy.
b) You are calculating your taxes. Your taxable income (salary for example) is $20,000. Your tax bracket is say 20%. During the year you spent $6,000 that the government allows you to DEDUCT. So after you report your salary, you take out the amonts you can deduct from your income: $20,000 minus $6,000 =$14,000. The deduction has helped you decrease the income on which the IRS is going to calculate your taxes. See the difference?
Now you pay only pay taxes on the $14,000 or 20% times $$14,000 equals $2,800 check to the IRS.
The difference is that a tax credit is applied to reduce the final bill...... and a tax deduction is applied against your income to decrease it before you calculate your final bill.(8 votes)
- Could a tax deduction change your bracket? Say, x amount into a bracket, and your tax deduction was x+y. Would that bring you down into a lower bracket?(14 votes)
If I have more tax deductions than income, will the government give me money? Is that even a possible scenario?(6 votes)
No, deductions have to be deducted from income. No income, no deduction. However, there are in addition to deductions such a thing as tax credits. A small number of tax credits, including the Earned Income Tax Credit, are "refundable", meaning the government will give you money if your net tax liability is negative.(6 votes)
Can you explain in more detail again what Tax Deductions are ?(4 votes)- An Example: You earn $100,000 per year. And maybe you can now deduct $10,000. That means that you only have to pay tax on $100,000 - $10,000 = $90,000.
In general:
Income= I
Tax deduction= d
Tax rate= r
(I - d) * r(10 votes)
What is the difference between tax deductions and tax credit?(5 votes)- A tax credit is deducted directly from your tax bill. A tax deduction reduces the amount of your income subject to tax. So if your tax rate is 25%, a $1000 deduction saves you $250, but a credit saves you $1000.(7 votes)
- Im only in 9th grade, why do we have to learn this so early?(7 votes)
Taxes is something you should learn as soon as possible, because it's how much less money you will get, also, learning it well will help you from paying an accountant to do your taxes.(2 votes)
What sorts of things would cause you to receive tax CREDITS? They sound rather awesome.(3 votes)
Tax credits are a useful tool to reduce your tax liability. For an individual taxpayer, the most common credits are the Earned Income Credit, the Child Tax Credit and the education credits.
An important point to remember when researching tax credits is that they come in two varieties, refundable and non-refundable. A nonrefundable tax credit (ie. the Child Tax Credit) acts similar to a coupon for your tax liability. It reduces your tax liability but not below zero. For example, if your tax liability is $300 and you have a $1,000 child tax credit, your tax liability is lowered to $0. The remaining $700 is not used.
A refundable credit increases your withholding. An example of this would be the Earned Income Credit. To continue from my previous example, let's say you have a $300 tax liability, a $1,000 Child Tax Credit, and $5,000 Earned Income Credit. The $1,000 Child Tax Credit will reduce your tax liability to $0, but the remaining $700 cannot be used. Even though your tax liability is zero, the Earned Income Credit will increase your refund by $5,000.
If you should have any other questions on tax credits, I encourage you to reach out to an Enrolled Agent in the area. They are licensed by the IRS and regarded as the leading tax professionals in the country.(3 votes)
- Just to be clear it is as if you are subtracting the interest twice? Because in order to come up with your gross income you would have taken away what you paid in interest already. So what Sal is saying here is now you subtract it again?(3 votes)
Yes kinda but also no at the same time beacuse of the morgadges and other things so mabye watch again and see what you can take from that(2 votes)
- Why do governments introduce tax deduction? Doesn't it mean that the government will have less income in the year which is not beneficial to the government?(3 votes)
So when someone donates to charities, are their actual tax amounts going down (tax credit) or is it that the taxable income has gone down?(2 votes)
When someone donates to charities, that is a tax deduction, so the taxable income goes down.(3 votes)
Video transcript
In this video, I
now want to cover one of the other most
misunderstood ideas when people think
about taxes, and that's the idea of deductions. So, one of the most
common tax deductions is the deduction you get on
interest on your mortgage. So let's say that this year
on my mortgage-- of the part of my mortgage that is interest,
let's say it's $10,000. It is $10,000 on my
interest on my mortgage. And you'll either already
know or someone might tell you that this is tax deductible. And the misconception that
I've seen many, many times is that people think that
since this is a tax deduction, that this $10,000 should be
deducted from their taxes. So in the previous example,
we showed the scenario where this person
making $100,000 would have to pay
$21,720 in taxes. And so based on
that misconception, they would say, OK, I get
a $10,000 tax deduction, now I would pay $11,720. And that is wrong. The deduction doesn't happen
from the taxes you pay. The deduction happens
from your stated income. So if this person right here
had a $10,000 tax deduction, instead of saying that they
made $100,000 that year, they would say that
they made $90,000. So once again, the
deduction does not come directly from the taxes. That would be a tax credit. The deduction comes from
the reported income. So what would be the
actual effect on the taxes? Well, we just have to
look at this $90,000. It still kind of shows
up in that top bracket. So the real difference
is just going to be this $10,000 difference. Before, he was paying
28% on this $10,000. Now he won't have to pay 28%
on that incremental $10,000. Another way to think about it,
instead of this being 17,750 times 28%, it
would now be 7,750. Because the reported
income is now only $90,000. So the actual number-- we
can get our calculator out and just calculate it. There's two ways
you could do it. You could just say, look, if
I'm going to have spent 10,000-- if my income is
deducted by 10,000, and I'm going to save
28% on that 10,000, you could just subtract
2,800 from this. But just to show you
how it'll all work, that it all works out
to the same thing, let's just go through the
same calculation again. We have 7,750 times
0.28 plus 48,300 times 0.25 plus 25,600
times 0.15 plus $835. And it's $18,920. So now the taxes
will be $18,920. And as you can
see, the difference between the old and
the new is exactly $2,800 because that's
essentially what the amount that we would be
taxed on that $10,000 if we had made that much money. Anyway, hopefully that
doesn't confuse you too much.