<p>im so fine with a 50k/year salary and I do enjoy chemical engineering. I may be going to grad school to further my ambition in chemical engineering. Come on, where is the joy? I dont even know what I want to do with 200k/year.</p>
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<p>You get to pay $70K of it in taxes.</p>
<p>^^^ More than that if you live in Maine!! Blech.</p>
<p>Oh yeah, we have to do a Maine return this year. 8% max rate, right? It gets up there in a hurry too. Around $20K?</p>
<p>8%? Wow. Do you not pay property tax?</p>
<p>I don’t own any property in Maine so I don’t know but the 8% is the state tax. I assume that they have local property taxes.</p>
<p>I just looked it up. There’s local property tax only, which makes things cheaper. In GA, I get hit with local, state, county, and school property taxes. It also looks like Maine is going to a 6.5% flat tax next year, which is not horrible.</p>
<p>That “local property tax” is pretty high, though. Ours went up almost 10% this year, alone. Maine is also eliminating some deductions that we currently get, so that 6.5% is a little misleading. We have one of the highest tax burdens in the country, or so we’re told.</p>
<p>The impression that I get with the graduated tax rates at such low levels is that average income is very low in the state. That jives with the type of jobs that you would expect from a state with tourism as its main industry. It also means that you get your pocket picked pretty quickly if you make an income that would be consider modest in other New England states. It may be the reason why the state has such trouble attracting industry (besides the obvious reason of the weather).</p>