system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5: How do taxes work?

I've just graduated from high schools and I still have no fucking clue how taxes work.
gpt
Income tax works like this:

Your first X dollars are taxed at a specific rate. That's a plain percentage -- possibly 0%.

Your next Y dollars are taxed at a slightly higher rate. Your next Z dollars likewise.

If you do certain things the government wants to promote, you can pretend your income was lower.

As an example, let's say the tax brackets are 0% up to $10k, 10% on the next $15k, and 30% after that. You made $50k. You bought an electric car for $5k, and that's tax deductible.

So in your taxes, you write down your gross income: $50k.

Then you subtract the $5k deduction for the electric car: $45k.

Now you look at the first tax bracket. It's 0% up to $10k, so you take off up to $10k from your income, multiply that by 0%, and add it to the tax you owe. That bracket gave you $0 in taxes and accounted for $10k of your income.

You still have $35k left, so you look at the next bracket. It takes up to $15k of your income, and that portion of the income is taxed at 10%, so it adds $1,500 to your taxes.

You still have $20k left, so you look at the next bracket. That takes all your remaining income and taxes it at 30%, giving you another $6,000 in taxes.

That handles all your income, so you just sum up the amount of tax from each bracket -- $0 + $1,500 + $6,000 → $7,500 total.

There are other types of tax, but that's probably the one you're talking about.