After watching the Federal Budget I say #TakeMyTenDollars and jog-on; how about giving one real tax-break to Millennials to help us help ourselves?
Stop taking half of everything I earn in a second gig I only took so I could afford to live!
Gather round baby-boomer-budget-beneficiaries, and I’ll try to sum up what life as a Millennial is like in 2018…
Let’s play a game of MILLENNIAL MONOPOLY. The rules are simple, you start with no money, you can’t afford anything, the board is on fire for some reason and everything is your fault.
— TechnicallyRon (@TechnicallyRon) May 6, 2018
Life is insanely expensive! Your pay barely makes it past pay-day, a pay rise to match CPI is apparently a lottery win not, you know, a right, while at the same time, blowing $300 on a night-out feels strangely normal.
But we get it. We even choose it to an extent. Most of us live in the city because that’s where we want to be; it’s where the jobs are and where the nightlife is*
*Except you, Sydney.
We know buying a house is no longer the dream, it’s something that kids with rich grandparents do.
And we know we’ll definitely spend our savings on a holiday and ASOS rather than anything smart because… ?
But truth be told, we are also happy to try to help ourselves…
It was once the case that if you had a side-hustle you were absolutely a dealer, but now it’s pretty much the norm. Many of us now have a side-earn to help get ahead (or at least back to even), and yet this is where we are truly being screwed.
Our 9-5 job pays the bills, while the side-earn puts actual coin in our pocket, or keeps the creative side of our brain engaged in a way Excel just cannot do.
I’m talking Uber driving, pod-casting, pulling-beers, Vlogging, Insta-modelling, whatever; if it makes you money on the side, we’re into it.
So when I sit down at Budget time to see how we’ll maybe/hopefully benefit and am told the golden-bullet is a ten-dollar-a-week tax-deduction that’ll arrive as a $530 sum with my tax-return I want to throw my phone at the TV.
(Except I don’t, because if the screen breaks it’d eat up almost my entire golden-bullet.)
There was no mention of the true killer: The obscene tax-rate on that second income.
Have a go at this…
If you earn additional income via a 2nd job or personal business you will be taxed at 37% plus 2% Medicare levy, so that’s a tax rate of 39%.
The rate goes up to 47% for every dollar you earn over $180k (ha!).
Nearly half of every dollar you earn working above-and-beyond the job you already do goes to the tax-man.
Jog on, champ.
How does that motivate anyone to get ahead?
It’s not easy to find the time, the energy or the opportunity to have a second earn, but for those who do, rather than get rewarded you are smashed.
Think about this in practical terms…
Lets’ take being an Uber driver (Everyone’s default fall-back plan if it all truly goes to s**t), if you want to make $100 this is how hard it is:
Let’s say $100 in fares is around an hour of driving with passengers.
But then take out Uber’s 20%, then GST, then car expenses, then this whopping tax figure and now your $100 is actually more like $35.
So to make $100 your one hour of driving is more like 3-and-a-half to 4 hours in the car.
Would you spend 4 hours of your downtime to make $100?
Or say you want to pull beers at night, where the median wage is $20, take out your 39% tax and all of a sudden its $14 an hour.
Would you work for $14 an hour anymore?
It’s not the people on $350,000 looking to do this, it’s those on 50k, or 70k, or even 90k who are just trying to help themselves, yet they get hit with nearly the highest possible tax rate.
And we’re not making millions from it, so you’re not fixing any federal debt black-hole with it.
We’re the generation who get shut-down at pay-review time because there’s a metaphoric belt to be tightened to make sure the share-holders get their dividends, and yet we are double-hammered for trying to do something about it.
So, no, I correct myself, I will actually #TakeMyTenDollars because you are getting more than enough from me already.