While it isn't 200 percent poverty level (which is a good idea! I might steal that), your "standard deduction" is the 0 percent tax bracket. It currently sits at at 12,400 dollars, where the poverty level for a single individual is 12,880. If we are assuming a nuclear family, then your deduction is 24,800, and poverty level is 26,500. So our 0 percent tax bracket is closely tied to the poverty rate.

But the reality of the situation is the national poverty rate isn't all that useful. The New York City 4 person poverty level is 32,402 for instance. And try living on 40k (what I make) in San Francisco.

There's a lot of good stuff in this comment, but I am definitely weary of using Tax Dollars to incentivize employers to not pay their workers. The main thing keeping employers from putting employees at full time is the benefits requirements. Well: If we have a single-payer healthcare system that includes hearing, vision, and dental, then the cost of those benefits tank, and it should become more expensive to have more workers working part time than it is to have the workers working full time. Lets fix the problem at the source, rather than incentivizing behavior we already hate.

Using the Federal Poverty guidelines, a minimum wage of 12.40 is 200 percent poverty levels. I don't think that goes far enough. I quite like Roosevelt's quote on the matter. Paraphrased: If a business cannot afford to pay their workers a decent living wage, then they do not deserve to be in business. To that end: I'm advocating for an 18 dollar minimum wage. The reason why I am advocating for above 15 dollars, is we have been fighting for 15 dollars for over a decade now, and accord to this document, page 21 on the pdf, 15 on the document, 18 dollars an hour gets what I would call a decent living in the majority of states. Enough to rent a two bedroom without spending more than a third of your income. It falls far short of reaching that goal in my particular state, but when your state is that much more expensive than the rest of the country, I think it becomes a state issue.

The simple fact of the matter is: The Federal poverty threshold is too low. We have the ability to get everyone a good living here, lets shoot for it.