Vox’s Tax Calculator Is Wildly Misleading—So We Made a Better One

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/voxs-tax-calculator-is-wildly-misleading-so-we-made-a-better-one/

Taxes, in other words, don’t exist in a vacuum—what the government does with those taxes matters quite a bit.

A key part of the Sanders plan, for example, is health insurance. In Vox’s calculator, your tax rate increases to fund Sanders’s Medicare-for-All plan. But they’re not accounting for the fact that your employer will no longer be paying for your health insurance. Will you pay more taxes? Yes. But if your employer currently pays for your insurance, as is the case for about half of Americans, then companies’ newfound savings under Medicare-for-All will be passed onto you in the form of higher wages.

The impact of this healthcare system would be huge. The Kaiser Family Foundation finds that the average employer-sponsored insurance costs $17,545 for a family plan, and $6,251 for single coverage. Under the Sanders plan, employers would pay an additional 6.2 percent in payroll taxes and individuals an additional 2.2 percent tax to finance health insurance. Many Americans come out ahead in the calculation once we include this important detail.

[lakeguy]

1. Finally, thanks for this!