In the US about 5-10% of people are “self-employed” and have access to all their pre-tax income.
Essentially a single employee business, they are required to withhold their own taxes from their earnings, including the employment taxes normally paid by the employer, etc. which is an additional 15.5% on top of the progressive income tax.
Aside from that, in the US there are forms you fill out at the beginning of employment which determine how much is to be withheld. While they can be updated at any time, it’s not always done promptly. Divorce or death of a dependant child could increase how much is withheld.
I have been self employed for almost 20 years. I pay a far higher tax rate than billionaires and I haven’t been able to afford to go to the dentist even once in that time.
Fair point. It didn’t make sense to me because where I am you have mostly no say on the pre-taxed amount.
If you’re employed by a company, it has to pay taxes for you which are mostly going the state health insurance and state retirement funds, up to a particular sum (which is around the average salary for everyone - so if you’re making more than that, you’re not having more put aside towards retirement). A lot of companies offer extra (private) health insurance as a perk, but it’s fully optional. From then on you can save into a private retirement fund, but again fully optional and up to the person.
If you’re (legally) self-employed, you kind of have to do the same thing by yourself, you just have the liberty to decide how much to declare as your salary (people here usually as little as possible so as to pay as little taxes as possible). If you’re in the grey/black market segment and you don’t pay anything, you’d have to 1) pay for the basic state health insurance yourself (otherwise, if something happens, you’re paying way bigger sums out of pocket) and 2) you have to make up for the length of service, otherwise (if you don’t have enough years of work) you can’t retire.
In the US about 5-10% of people are “self-employed” and have access to all their pre-tax income.
Essentially a single employee business, they are required to withhold their own taxes from their earnings, including the employment taxes normally paid by the employer, etc. which is an additional 15.5% on top of the progressive income tax.
Aside from that, in the US there are forms you fill out at the beginning of employment which determine how much is to be withheld. While they can be updated at any time, it’s not always done promptly. Divorce or death of a dependant child could increase how much is withheld.
I have been self employed for almost 20 years. I pay a far higher tax rate than billionaires and I haven’t been able to afford to go to the dentist even once in that time.
Fair point. It didn’t make sense to me because where I am you have mostly no say on the pre-taxed amount.
If you’re employed by a company, it has to pay taxes for you which are mostly going the state health insurance and state retirement funds, up to a particular sum (which is around the average salary for everyone - so if you’re making more than that, you’re not having more put aside towards retirement). A lot of companies offer extra (private) health insurance as a perk, but it’s fully optional. From then on you can save into a private retirement fund, but again fully optional and up to the person.
If you’re (legally) self-employed, you kind of have to do the same thing by yourself, you just have the liberty to decide how much to declare as your salary (people here usually as little as possible so as to pay as little taxes as possible). If you’re in the grey/black market segment and you don’t pay anything, you’d have to 1) pay for the basic state health insurance yourself (otherwise, if something happens, you’re paying way bigger sums out of pocket) and 2) you have to make up for the length of service, otherwise (if you don’t have enough years of work) you can’t retire.
Edit: I meant to reply to https://lemm.ee/comment/20945227 , but I guess it applies to your comment as well.