Income tax question

Good ol' Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_bracket


"Imagine that there are three tax brackets: 10%, 20%, and 30%. The 10% rate applies to income from $1 to $10,000; the 20% rate applies to income from $10,001 to $20,000; and the 30% rate applies to all income above $20,000.

Under this system, someone earning $10,000 would be taxed at a rate of 10%, paying a total of $1,000. Someone earning $5,000 would pay $500, and so on.

Meanwhile, someone earning $35,000 would face a more complicated equation. The rate on the first $10,000 would be 10%; the rate from $10,001 to $20,000 would be 20%; and the rate above that would be 30%. Thus, they would pay $1,000 for the first $10,000 of income; $2,000 for the second $10,000 of income; and $4,500 for the last $15,000 of income; in total, they would pay $7,500, or about 21.4%."

I personally would understand it this way.

"I am being taxed ON 20% of my income" means that the tax authorities only consider that 20% of my income is taxable.

"I am being taxed 20% of my income" means that I am paying 20% of my income to the tax authorities.

If I wasn't sure I would ask the person making the statement (a) what they meant and (b) to be a bit more precise in future.

Income tax question
This is a question of precision - grammatically, either interpretation would be corrrect. You have to judge by the contest surrounding the sentence.

Income tax question
Oops! Typo Typo Typo!

Shoudl have been conteXt not conteSt - maybe I could make a bit of a pun there, about the contest between the two possible meanings...