Alabama Tax Form 40: Fill & Download for Free

Go to GoogleType in the box, “Alabama paycheck calculator.”Go to the link for smartasset.com’s calculatorEnter the info and click calculate.Give a man an answer and he’ll forget it in a few minutes. Teach that man to find the answer and when he forgets in a few minutes he can go get the answer again. Mhm.

One of the things I detest the most when speaking about economics are people who abuse statistics to obfuscate real problems. Mississippi is basically at developing world status in many ways, and while there are certainly far worse places to live in the world, pretending that places like Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas are “great” places to live compared to UK and Sweden, is essentially insane. Here’s a few points to think about:1) Cost of Living versus Quality of LivingOne of the biggest problems with comparisons in many cases is what you get when you pay for it. Take real estate for example. It’s essentially a great market situation where the most desirable locations to live (location, location, location) fetch the highest prices regardless of the square footage or condition of the home.If you want to live in the Bay Area of northern California, it will cost you 1 to 2 million USD for a rather unimpressive house. If you want to live in downtown Vancouver, it’ll cost you 2 million CAD or more. But if you want to live in Detroit, it’ll cost you mere tens of thousands. If you want to live in rural Alabama and want a mansion, it’ll probably cost you 200 000 to 300 000 USD. Want to live there? Is your answer, “fuck, no”? Yeah, there’s probably a reason for that, isn’t there?Terrible places to live have low prices because of low demand.2) Comparing different basket of goods to purchaseYou have substantial problems trying to compare the actual amount of disposable income between people of different countries because of the multitude of life situations that a simple average GDP per capita with Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) calculations cannot handle.Compare a Canadian (where I’m from) just after university. Sitting with 20–30k in student debt, able to secure a high end job of 40–60k coming out of university if they chose a good degree and might expect a starter home to cost 500–700k in a major city. Now, think about a Swede. This person has zero student debt, able to get a 30–50k job with that same degree and able to buy a starter home in Stockholm for 300–500k. Hey, that Swede is “poorer” because they have less income right? As you can see, they can be upwards to 30k ahead in pure cash at the same age as a Canadian and by the time both reach 30, the Canadian may not even be a homeowner whereas the Swede could have gone into it nearly immediately. The Swede is going to be far ahead.This is similar to someone in Alabama who can be “far ahead” on paper but is far behind in practice. A Swede simply doesn’t buy or never bought the same goods because for one reason or another never needed to do so.A Swede never pays for healthcare.A Swede living in a major city never needs to buy a car.A Swede doesn’t pay for education.Edit: Apparently I have to be really pedantic here and point out that when I say “doesn’t pay”, I mean at the point of service. Since Americans are wont to point out that universal healthcare and tuition fees are paid for by taxes, I’ll point out that an American pays twice as much with taxes/private combined compared to the Swede and anywhere between $12 000/year (in-state) to $50 000/year (private) for post-secondary tuition fees compared to $2000/year in Sweden, which is then spread across all taxpayers (so probably like ~$670 in taxes per capita).This is also made more pronounced due to differing rates of urbanization. A place like Canada has 80% urban rate. Sounds similar to USA? Think again. Canada’s definition of urban requires a far higher population density and when applied to the United States, USA is only 40% urban. Urban places are more expensive but you get more for what you’re paying for: faster services, more government programs, full service hospitals, job mobility etc. That’s also the reason places like Sweden and Denmark can handle their higher taxes: people live much closer together, leading to decreased square footage per person but increased access to government programs. PPP doesn’t care if you’re urban/rural and what that means, it just blindly concludes that because rural is cheaper, it’ll slash the income of people living in urban areas. For nearly all urban dwellers that makes basically zero sense.In another vein, the United States is super duper cheap for luxury goods like TVs. It is really expensive for necessities. Healthcare costs nothing out of pocket and about half in taxes in Sweden or UK compared to USA. Education costs are zero in Sweden and Denmark, expensive in UK but the USA is by far the most expensive (especially if you go private/out-of-state instead of in-state).These costs can set back someone in America for years to decades. On paper the GDP per capita looks great, but again, in reality a person with $100k in student debt and no home compared to someone with $30k in cash in the bank and a modest starter condo… who do you think feels ahead in life? Those happiness ratings are higher in Sweden/Denmark for a reason. They get to care about how to improve their lives while many in Alabama or Mississippi are busy scrambling to afford to live.3) High Standards eliminate lower cost goodsAs someone who has tried eggs, milk, chicken and beef between USA and Canada, there is one thing that always struck me as odd: American food can be cheaper but its quality drops non-linearly with price.A person in Alabama or Mississippi is going to enjoy substantially lower grocery costs to a Canadian or a Swede but it comes with a condition: that food has far lower standards. You can look more closely at various statistics but essentially:Standards are lower for eggs and milk in particularCanada, like Sweden, basically has one grade for each and it’s equivalent to the second fanciest milk you can find on American shelves… but the price difference is shocking. While Canadian milk/eggs are probably about 10–20% more expensive than the low grade American stuff, the same grade is about 50% more expensive in America.Food poisoning rates in places like Sweden are orders of magnitude lower than in the USA.Housing in cold countries have high standardsA basic wall is eight inches thick in most of Canada or Sweden.A lot of housing you would buy, other than in historic downtown regions, are newly built to very high standard building codes.At the end of the day, health matters a lot:Sweden has a life expectancy of 82.4, UK at 81.2 Denmark at 80.6Mississippi has a life expectancy of 75, Alabama at 75.44) Better social conditionsUntil you live with universal healthcare, you really won’t understand the difference. Until you live in a country with strict gun control, you really won’t appreciate the difference. Until you live in a country with strict corruption controls on government, you won’t realize what is possible. Until you live in a country that has to deal with f-ing winter destroying all your stuff every year… okay well that one is not an improvement.I’m not trying to spark the mega culture wars present in the United States. Americans can choose their own fate. What I’m talking about here is that the intangibles matter a lot:Alabama has more than eight times the murder rate of Sweden or UKFrom brief research, ~11% of adult Alabamans don’t have healthcare (zero in Sweden, UK or Denmark)I don’t have a number by state but 69% of Americans have less than $1000 in savings. Based on brief research, that’s more like 20% of Swedes (fairly in line with poverty rate).And it’s really hard to compare government and corporate corruption. Did your GDP measure compare road quality? Traffic death rate?Sweden’s traffic fatality rate is 2.8 per 100 000 compared with 10.9 in the USA.In particular, Alabama has a fatality rate of 17.5Mississippi is 22.6I mean, we’re talking the difference in people dying in car accidents is so much higher in these US States that it exceeds the entire difference in the murder rate by almost 50%. For me, this is indicative of state governments that need its local residents to demand better governance.In the end, the simplest statement I can make is this: if I slashed Sweden’s GDP via a PPP calculation made out of pure bullshit, it can look as poor as you like on paper. It doesn’t change the truth.

Anyone who is a Republican really needs to sit down when it comes to critiquing the economic understanding of any Democrat. A potted plant who runs on the Democratic economic platform would be eminently more qualified to speak on economic theory than any Republican. That is, if plants could actually speak.It should be clear after 40 years of Republican promises that Republicans have fed the nation lies about shrinking government while slashing taxes primarily for the rich, that they know NOTHING about economics. Lining the pockets of the richest people and corporations does not equal successful economic policy: the overall welfare of the rest of the country that doesn’t live off of investment money, inheritances, and trust funds is important, too.And on that score, the data is clear: we are failing. Bigly. Inequality is soaring, poverty is increasing, the ability to improve one’s economic status has worsened, our infrastructure is failing, high paying jobs that do not require a formal education such as factory jobs that used to be a ticket to the middle class have left the country and the overall health of our citizens is such that life expectancy is decreasing.And this has all occurred over the last 40 years because of the economic policies we have had over that time. Trade policy, tax policy, the lifting of regulations that protected workers from predatory corporations—all of it favored the rich and powerful, and surely as night follows day, they have hollowed out this country and pocketed the gain.And make no mistake: over the last 40 years, we have had only two Democratic Presidents and economic policy has been, with the exception of Clinton and Obama who were forced to clean up Republican messes by reversing Republican policies in part, has largely been dictated by conservative ideologues. Clinton and Obama only had Democratic majorities for a fraction of their administrations[1][1][1][1][2][2][2][2] —so we have never really had a situation in the last 40 years where Democratic economic policy has had the run of the place at the federal level.As you will see, there HAS been one instance at the state level where that state did have an all Democratic government implement a Democratic economic agenda, and the results have been…well, keep reading.The poorest states in the union are overwhelmingly controlled by Republican governors and state leaders, and have been for decades[3] . In particular, the Kansas experiment, announced with much fanfare, failed so spectacularly a Republican legislature had to reverse it.[4][5]Republican administrations since Reaganomics have performed worse than Democratic administrations[6] [7] . In particular, nine out of the last ten recessions have been under Republicans[8] Of course, the Forbes article doesn’t account for the economy’s failure under Trump since it was written before 2020, so you can add number eleven to the list of Republican recessions.California in particular is the fifth largest economy in the world. Contrary to right wing lies, it does not have the highest tax rate, [9] but it does have high taxes compared to right wing paradises like Alabama and Mississippi. And, as a bonus, when Jerry Brown took the reins in 2012 he did so with an all Democratic legislature, thus becoming only the second Democratic governor in 40 years and the only Democratic governor that had a completely Democratic legislature with enough ability to completely overwhelm the Republican minority and pass legislation without needing Republican votes[10][11] since the 19th century. While California has had a majority Democratic legislature for years, it never had enough of a majority to meet the two-thirds majority needed to pass legislation without Republicans being able to gum up things—which is what they did for years, causing budgets to be late, cutting funding to the UC system, and the state’s bond ratings to sink, among other actions. That ended in 2012. With that supermajority, Brown was able to enact his economic policy with no Republican interference or delay at the same time Brownback began his “Kansas experiment” with his all Republican legislature. Wanna guess who won the day there? Well you don’t have to—we know the answer[12][13]. And you wonder why California, the state that gave the country Nixon and Reagan, doesn’t elect Republicans any more. It’s because we learned our lesson.While we are on taxes, there is no evidence that cutting taxes does benefit the economy—at least not the way the Republicans have done it[14][15][16] . You might even remember when Trump was proposing his tax cut, CEOs were specifically asked if they intended to use the cut to hire more people and expand their businesses— and in a rare moment of honesty, they overwhelmingly said no[17] . Note that there is video of this. Anyone still believe the snake oil that says tax cuts are good for working people now that CEOs have made fools of supply siders? If you do, then know you may as well believe there is a man in red who will leave you presents in winter for being good.The richest states are run overwhelmingly by Democratic or Democratic leaning governments.[18] . Save for Alaska, which is wealthy because of oil and because citizens receive income from that directly which raises the annual household income in that state, you will not find a low tax Republican led state [19] on the list of the wealthiest states—in fact, many of them have relatively high tax rates. There is no correlation between living in a low tax state and economic performance[20]—because money to run the state has to come from somewhere, those residents end up paying more in other ways: higher property or sales taxes or other fees[21][22] . Given that they are paying about the same level of taxes as those states that do have higher income taxes, you’d be forgiven if you wondered where the money is going, because it sure as shootin’ ain't going into the infrastructure down there. Schools, roads, health care access—it’s all bad, so bad some places in rural America are comparable to the poverty on would see in third world countries[23][24][25] . And they aren't attracting the types of jobs that richer, higher taxes states are attracting--their residents either have to settle for low wage work, no work, or they have to leave the state altogether for their own survival. Conservatives are free to try to explain why low taxes and less regulations haven’t benefited the states they run in this manner, and why businesses have not overwhelmingly left the hated commie-socialist California and New York for Kansas, the Midwest, Alabama and Mississippi. I lived in Nevada, an no income tax state that has been called the Mississippi of the West for over a decade during the growth of Las Vegas in the late ‘90s, and the governor kept talking about how they would get all those sweet California jobs because they had no taxes and a “business climate” and because of that those business owners would load their crap into the nearest U-Haul faster than a New York minute. As you can see from the charts of the wealthiest states,they are still waiting for those jobs from California to pour over the border—in fact, Nevada’s leaders don’t talk about that anymore.And of course, on a global level, the most successful economies, which we like to compare ourselves to, have higher tax levels than the US as well as more stringent business regulations, tighter labor laws to ensure a job actually enables you to make a living, an education infrastructure that in many cases ensures a free university education/vocational training, a well paid education staff from K-12, and a better social safety net that ensures that every citizen has access to basic needs (which includes a health care system that doesn’t bankrupt their citizens because they have the nerve to get sick or injured). And with all those factors, which right wingers say will kill our country if mimicked here, they rank high in livability and the wellbeing of their citizens while managing to have stable, successful economies that create high skilled, well paying jobs[26] . Not a one of these countries runs on the regressive economic hyper capitalism policies that tilt toward the rich while leaving so many of their citizens in poverty that the US has been running on for the last 40 years. Despite being the richest country in the world (and if we aren’t we are close), we aren’t even in the top ten countries when it comes to the metrics that determine the quality of life.So, if you are reading the answers from right wingers here, know that their knowledge of economics renders their opinions to be a stinking, steaming load of you know what. It’s like everything else they say: it’s based on what they would like to see or what they think should happen, or on their own selfish desires, not on what actually happens in the real world. Because it’s obvious they haven’t read the overwhelming amount of data that shows their economic policy is crap.But then again, as we are seeing with this pandemic, conservatives have gotten quite good at sticking their fingers in their ears and going “lalalala” when facts contradict their beliefs. Ask Herman Cain how ignoring data and facts abut the coronavirus worked out for him. Or rather, ask his family, as they prepare to bury him. He died of that thing he called a hoax.There are times when there aren’t two sides to every argument. Economic policy as preached and practiced by our right wing is clearly a failure. It doesn’t work. Just like stating a pandemic isn’t really happening when it is killing people by the thousands doesn’t work.AOC is smart, and does understand economics. Very well. Evidence of that is her knowing Republican economic theory is BS. She obviously, with her degree in economics, HAS looked at the data, and has understood it.Talking to a right winger about economic policy should be like talking to a voodoo healer about how to treat and cure cancer: a nonstarter. That is, if you want to live.Footnotes[1] Presidents and Congresses[1] Presidents and Congresses[1] Presidents and Congresses[1] Presidents and Congresses[2] When Obama Had "Total Control of Congress"[2] When Obama Had "Total Control of Congress"[2] When Obama Had "Total Control of Congress"[2] When Obama Had "Total Control of Congress"[3] The 10 poorest states in America[4] The Republican Party Must Answer for What It Did to Kansas and Louisiana[5] Op-Ed: Kansas' tax cuts are a spectacular failure. Meanwhile, in California ...[6] Economists Agree: Democratic Presidents are Better at Making Us Rich. Eight Reasons Why. - Evonomics[7] Trump Is Right About One Thing: 'The Economy Does Better Under The Democrats'[8] Trump Is Right About One Thing: 'The Economy Does Better Under The Democrats'[9] These three states have the highest income taxes[10] With a Supermajority, California Democrats Begin to Make Plans[11] It’s Confirmed. Democrats Win Supermajority in California Assembly[12] Jerry Brown Is Dreaming Of A Blue Christmas[13] Op-Ed: Kansas' tax cuts are a spectacular failure. Meanwhile, in California ...[14] These 7 charts show Trump's tax cuts still haven't been the economic 'rocket fuel' he promised, 2 years after the fact | Markets Insider[15] Record debt and inequality gap? It's almost like 40 years of Republican tax cuts failed.[16] A New Congressional Study Finds Little Economic Benefit From The 2017 Tax Cuts[17] CEOs agree: Corporate tax cuts won't trickle down[18] Richest States 2020[19] states with no state income tax[20] Is Living In A State With No Income Tax Better Or Worse? | Bankrate.com[21] Is Living In A State With No Income Tax Better Or Worse? | Bankrate.com[22] These three states have the highest income taxes[23] https://www.newsweek.com/alabama-un-poverty-environmental-racism-743601[24] Report: Rural Poverty In America Is 'An Emergency'[25] Southern poverty gets the United Nations' attention[26] https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/quality-of-life-rankings