Friday Dec. 28, 2012
Curious how falling off the fiscal cliff will impact you?
A pair of Washington D.C. research organizations, the Tax Foundation and the Tax Policy Center, have online calculators that help you gauge the impact. You can input your income level, number of kids, the dividend income you expect and more to get at the figure.
Look here for the Tax Foundation calculator. Go here for the Tax Policy Center calculator.
Suffice it to say, you’ll likely feel the pinch if U.S. lawmakers can’t devise a fix to avoid the fiscal cliff, the mix of mandatory tax hikes and spending cuts that go into effect in the new year, just days away. Look at this story in today’s paper. You may notice a dip in your take home pay starting next year presuming no last-minute fix, reflective of higher tax rates. And federal taxes for the median income family in the Elkhart-Goshen area could go up by nearly $3,000 through 2013, presuming no fix through all of next year (which I hope is a long shot).
Here’s a table I put together showing the estimated fiscal cliff impact for a range of income levels if lawmakers can’t resolve the matter, using the Tax Foundation calculator:
If you want more, here are some numbers crunched by the Tax Foundation, showing the estimated impact of falling off the cliff in the biggest urban areas around the country (Elkhart-Goshen is number 36). Go here, Fiscal Cliff MSA Table, or look at the table below (which is kind of small here and hard to read):
Tim Vandenack is a reporter at the Elkhart Truth newspaper in Elkhart, Ind., www.etruth.com. He can be reached at tvandenack@etruth.com or 574-296-5884. Follow him on Facebook or Twitter at @timvandenack.
