From what I see you and Hayslayer are saying just about the same thing in different ways...... in a country when a "Federal Reserve" sets the interest rates and prints money without backing (fiat currency) - everyone and everything is eventually going to reach a day of reckoning. When you think about it is just like Las Vegas where the casino set the rules and the house always wins. As the Federal Reserve prints more money everyone's assets are immediately devalued by a corresponding rate - that is why people talk of for example a 401k worth $5,000,000 except ....... by manipulating interest rates and printing fiat currency a government can devalue or steal that money making those assets that were earned by doing $5,000,000 worth of work, investing, blood sweat and tears worth in reality only $2,500,000 effectively stealing $2,500,000 net worth from that person by knowingly devaluing the currency and redistributing it into the economy as 'funny money' giving the dollar another shot of heroin devaluing the country's currency even more.
You don't have to remember to include or exclude the taxable portion of ss as it is appropriately rolled into adjusted gross income on your tax return.
Very unevenly so, in a pattern that doesn't consistently reflect its contribution to available household spending budget.
But for the purposes of the poll, if we're going to answer by AGI, some of us might need to be reminded to answer zero.
Everybody gets at least standard deduction per person which is factored in later, not at adjusted gross income.
It's factored in after adjusted gross income, on the way to taxable income. But what does "Everybody gets at least standard deduction" mean to you? Are you thinking nobody's AGI ever falls below the standard deduction amount? There's a reason why line 15 is "Subtract line 14 from line 11b. If zero or less, enter -0-." It's totally possible for line 11b to be less than the deductions. You don't deduct more than your AGI actually is—so, you never end up with a negative taxable income. A person whose entire income in a year was social security (reported on line 6a) and with none of that being taxable (zero on line 6b) has zero AGI for that year. And gets to deduct nothing from that, and therefore has zero taxable income also.
