Novaseeker wrote about how child support really works. It’s something every man needs to read:
The main problem with the CS regime is that people are generally unaware how it really works. They assume it works one way, but really don’t understand the disparate impact of how it actually works. In effect, it is an additional tax, full stop, on the father which is paid to the mother on a tax-free basis. It really doesn’t matter how much you make, the tax rate is basically the same, the way the statutory formulas/guidelines generally work. People think it’s based on “income share”, because that’s how the statute is worded, and that’s how it was peddled when the CS rules were changed, but as you’ll see below, it’s really a flat tax on the father’s income regardless of income share.
Here are some examples, just to clarify. Let’s assume a child support calculator that is 15% of pre-tax income for one child.
Example One
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H income = 100k
W income = 100k
Total household income = 200k
Total support amount is 15% of 200k, which is 30k. H’s share of total income is 50%, so H pays ex-W 15k, or 15% of his pre-tax income.
Let’s look at what happens when we change the income levels.
Example Two
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H income = 100k
W income = 50k
Total household income = 150k
Total support amount is 15% of 150k, which is 22,500. H’s share of income is 66.67%, so H pays ex-W 66.67% of 22,500, which is …. 15k, or 15% of his pre-tax income.
Ok. What happens when ex-W earns a lot more than H?
Example Three
H income = 50k
W income = 100k
Total household income = 150k
Total support amount is 15% of 150k, which is 22,500. H’s share of income is 33.34%, so H pays ex-W 33.34% of 22,500, which is 7500. 7500 is, you guessed it, 15% of H’s pre-tax income.
The way it works is that the father pays a flat rate of his income to the mother no matter what. The actual amount of dollars that flow depends on income share, which means that a guy in example three pays less actual dollars, but the dollars that he does pay are the same % of his pre-tax income as the guys earning twice as much in examples one and two. It’s the same percentage of income no matter what. It’s a flat tax, plain and simple, which is then paid to Mom on a tax-free basis.
CS payments are invisible from the tax perspective, which, in effect, means that the tax impact is terribly disproportionate. Dad doesn’t get any deduction for CS payments. They’re treated as if they were rent or gasoline (except they are not variable — you can’t reduce the cost as you can with rent or gasoline by moving or driving less). And Mom receives them tax free — these payments are not reported on her tax return and are generally invisible. And, as the original post points out, they are made with after-tax dollars, so the actual “effect on income” is much, much higher than 15% — i.e., it’s much more than 15% of the take-home pay of Dad. If Dad in example one has take home pay of, say 60k, 15k of that goes to CS, which is 25% of his take-home pay being transferred to his ex-wife on a tax-free basis to her on an ongoing basis. And, again, that doesn’t even take into account the health care premiums, the college savings account requirements, the life insurance premiums, and so on, that one is required to maintain in the typical decree. At the end of the day, this is a huge, huge wealth transfer from men to women, and it takes place on a completely unreported basis because, again, these payments don’t count for tax purposes, so they are not figured in Mom’s income. Flatly put, it’s a big, big scam, but if you complain about it, you’re instantly denigrated as a deadbeat supporting jackass who hates women and children. It’s a system that has been well designed by feminists to enslave men to their ex-wives, in practice.
