Disposable and discretionary income

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Median American household disposable income
Not including Sales tax or property tax Household spending United States.png
Median American household disposable income
Not including Sales tax or property tax
Denmark disposable income after tax
Not including Value-added tax or Property tax Denmark disposable income.webp
Denmark disposable income after tax
Not including Value-added tax or Property tax
Germany disposable income after taxes
Not including Value-added tax or Property tax Germany disposable income after taxes.webp
Germany disposable income after taxes
Not including Value-added tax or Property tax

Disposable income is total personal income minus current income taxes. [1] In national accounts definitions, personal income minus personal current taxes equals disposable personal income. [2] Subtracting personal outlays (which includes the major category of personal [or private] consumption expenditure) yields personal (or, private) savings, hence the income left after paying away all the taxes is referred to as disposable income.

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Restated, consumption expenditure plus savings equals disposable income [3] after accounting for transfers such as payments to children in school or elderly parents’ living and care arrangements. [4]

The marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is the fraction of a change in disposable income that is consumed. For example, if disposable income rises by $100, and $65 of that $100 is consumed, the MPC is 65%. Restated, the marginal propensity to save is 35%.

For the purposes of calculating the amount of income subject to garnishments, United States' federal law defines disposable income as an individual's compensation (including salary, overtime, bonuses, commission, and paid leave) after the deduction of health insurance premiums and any amounts required to be deducted by law. Amounts required to be deducted by law include federal, state, and local taxes, state unemployment and disability taxes, social security taxes, and other garnishments or levies, but does not include such deductions as voluntary retirement contributions and transportation deductions. Those deductions would be made only after calculating the amount of the garnishment or levy. [5] The definition of disposable income varies for the purpose of state and local garnishments and levies.


Meanings of disposable income

Disposable income can be understood as:

Discretionary income

Discretionary income is disposable income (after-tax income), minus all payments that are necessary to meet current bills. It is total personal income after subtracting taxes and minimal survival expenses (such as food, medicine, rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance, transportation, property maintenance, child support, etc.) to maintain a certain standard of living. [7] It is the amount of an individual's income available for spending after the essentials have been taken care of:

Discretionary income = gross income – taxes – all compelled payments (bills)

The term "disposable income" is often incorrectly used to denote discretionary income. For example, people commonly refer to disposable income as the amount of "play money" left to spend or save. The Consumer Leverage Ratio is the expression of the ratio of total household debt to disposable income.[ citation needed ]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Saving</span> Income which is not immediately spent or otherwise used for consumption

Saving is income not spent, or deferred consumption. Methods of saving include putting money aside in, for example, a deposit account, a pension account, an investment fund, or as cash. Saving also involves reducing expenditures, such as recurring costs. In terms of personal finance, saving generally specifies low-risk preservation of money, as in a deposit account, versus investment, wherein risk is a lot higher; in economics more broadly, it refers to any income not used for immediate consumption. Saving does not automatically include interest.

Tax deduction is a simplified phrase for meaning income that is able to be taxed and is commonly a result of expenses, particularly those incurred to produce additional income. Tax deductions are a form of tax incentives, along with exemptions and tax credits. The difference between deductions, exemptions, and credits is that deductions and exemptions both reduce taxable income, while credits reduce tax.

Under United States tax law, itemized deductions are eligible expenses that individual taxpayers can claim on federal income tax returns and which decrease their taxable income, and are claimable in place of a standard deduction, if available.

Capital gain is an economic concept defined as the profit earned on the sale of an asset which has increased in value over the holding period. An asset may include tangible property, a car, a business, or intangible property such as shares.

A pay-as-you-earn tax (PAYE), or pay-as-you-go (PAYG) in Australia, is a withholding of taxes on income payments to employees. Amounts withheld are treated as advance payments of income tax due. They are refundable to the extent they exceed tax as determined on tax returns. PAYE may include withholding the employee portion of insurance contributions or similar social benefit taxes. In most countries, they are determined by employers but subject to government review. PAYE is deducted from each paycheck by the employer and must be remitted promptly to the government. Most countries refer to income tax withholding by other terms, including pay-as-you-go tax.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Payroll</span> Record of money paid or due to employees

A payroll is a list of employees of a company who are entitled to receive compensation as well as other work benefits, as well as the amounts that each should obtain. Along with the amounts that each employee should receive for time worked or tasks performed, payroll can also refer to a company's records of payments that were previously made to employees, including salaries and wages, bonuses, and withheld taxes, or the company's department that deals with compensation. A company may handle all aspects of the payroll process in-house or can outsource aspects to a payroll processing company.

In economics, the marginal propensity to consume (MPC) is a metric that quantifies induced consumption, the concept that the increase in personal consumer spending (consumption) occurs with an increase in disposable income. The proportion of disposable income which individuals spend on consumption is known as propensity to consume. MPC is the proportion of additional income that an individual consumes. For example, if a household earns one extra dollar of disposable income, and the marginal propensity to consume is 0.65, then of that dollar, the household will spend 65 cents and save 35 cents. Obviously, the household cannot spend more than the extra dollar. If the extra money accessed by the individual gives more economic confidence, then the MPC of the individual may well exceed 1, as they may borrow or utilise savings.

Household final consumption expenditure (POES) is a transaction of the national account's use of income account representing consumer spending. It consists of the expenditure incurred by resident households on individual consumption goods and services, including those sold at prices that are not economically significant. It also includes various kinds of imputed expenditure of which the imputed rent for services of owner-occupied housing is generally the most important one. The household sector covers not only those living in traditional households, but also those people living in communal establishments, such as retirement homes, boarding houses and prisons.

Tax brackets are the divisions at which tax rates change in a progressive tax system. Essentially, tax brackets are the cutoff values for taxable income—income past a certain point is taxed at a higher rate.

Income tax in the Netherlands is regulated by the Wet inkomstenbelasting 2001.

Garnishment is a legal process for collecting a monetary judgment on behalf of a plaintiff from a defendant. Garnishment allows the plaintiff to take the money or property of the debtor from the person or institution that holds that property. A similar legal mechanism called execution allows the seizure of money or property held directly by the debtor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National saving</span> Sum of a countrys private and public saving

In economics, a country's national saving is the sum of private and public saving. It equals a nation's income minus consumption and the government spending.

Average propensity to consume (as well as the marginal propensity to consume) is a concept developed by John Maynard Keynes to analyze the consumption function, which is a formula where total consumption expenditures (C) of a household consist of autonomous consumption (Ca) and income (Y) multiplied by marginal propensity to consume. According to Keynes, the individual's real income determines saving and consumption decisions.

Income taxes in Canada constitute the majority of the annual revenues of the Government of Canada, and of the governments of the Provinces of Canada. In the fiscal year ending 31 March 2018, the federal government collected just over three times more revenue from personal income taxes than it did from corporate income taxes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Average propensity to save</span> Proportion of income which is saved

In Keynesian economics, the average propensity to save (APS), also known as the savings ratio, is the proportion of income which is saved, usually expressed for household savings as a fraction of total household disposable income (taxed income).

Household income is a measure of the combined incomes of all people sharing a particular household or place of residence. It includes every form of income, e.g., salaries and wages, retirement income, near cash government transfers like food stamps, and investment gains.

In economics, personal income refers to the total earnings of an individual from various sources such as wages, investment ventures, and other sources of income. It encompasses all the products and money received by an individual.

In the United States tax law, an above-the-line deduction is a deduction that the Internal Revenue Service allows a taxpayer to subtract from his or her gross income in arriving at "adjusted gross income" for the taxable year. These deductions are set forth in Internal Revenue Code Section 62. A taxpayer's gross income minus his or her above-the-line deductions is equal to the adjusted gross income. Because these deductions are taken before adjusted gross income is calculated, they are designated "above-the-line". Thus, those deductions allowed in computing "taxable income" under section 63 of the IRC are "below-the-line deductions". Above-the-line deductions may be more valuable to high-income taxpayers than below-the-line deductions. Since tax year 2018, above-the-line deductions are reported on Schedule 1 of IRS Form 1040.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taxation in Spain</span>

Taxes in Spain are levied by national (central), regional and local governments. Tax revenue in Spain stood at 36.3% of GDP in 2013. A wide range of taxes are levied on different sources, the most important ones being income tax, social security contributions, corporate tax, value added tax; some of them are applied at national level and others at national and regional levels. Most national and regional taxes are collected by the Agencia Estatal de Administración Tributaria which is the bureau responsible for collecting taxes at the national level. Other minor taxes like property transfer tax (regional), real estate property tax (local), road tax (local) are collected directly by regional or local administrations. Four historical territories or foral provinces collect all national and regional taxes themselves and subsequently transfer the portion due to the central Government after two negotiations called Concierto and the Convenio. The tax year in Spain follows the calendar year. The tax collection method depends on the tax; some of them are collected by self-assessment, but others follow a system of pay-as-you-earn tax with monthly withholdings that follow a self-assessment at the end of the term.

Taxation in Belgium consists of taxes that are collected on both state and local level. The most important taxes are collected on federal level, these taxes include an income tax, social security, corporate taxes and value added tax. At the local level, property taxes as well as communal taxes are collected. Tax revenue stood at 48% of GDP in 2012.

References

  1. "Income Data Quality Issues in the Annual Social and Economic Supplement to the Current Population Survey" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-10-14. Retrieved 2017-12-07.
  2. Ruser, John; Pilot, Adrienne; Nelson, Charles. "Alternative Measures of Household Income: BEA Personal Income, CPS Money Income, and Beyond" (PDF). U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics . Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-06-11. Retrieved 2013-08-23.
  3. https://portal.wsiz.rzeszow.pl/plik.aspx?id=12166 [ dead link ]
  4. "Research Publications". www.parl.gc.ca. Archived from the original on 21 August 2007. Retrieved 27 May 2017.
  5. "31 CFR 285.11". Legal Information Institute. Cornell University. Retrieved June 29, 2012.
  6. "Glossary:National disposable income". Eurostat . Retrieved 2021-05-03.
  7. Linden, Fabian (1998). "A Marketer's Guide to Discretionary Income (abstract)". US Department of Education. Retrieved 2007-12-27.