The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess

Re:The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess by alkonaut on Thursday March 23, 2017 @08:19AM (#13939098)

Yeah - whether the "payroll tax" is seen as ever earned by me or not is just semantics. The employers expense is $8k in my case. I get that $8k minus payroll tax minus income tax to my bank account. The net is $4k. In this context if I'm asked how much I earn, the answer is $6k (i.e. before income tax but after payroll taxes). The fact that it's deducted first as $2k payroll then as $2k income tax doesn't change anything in terms of tax pressure however, and to include the total tax pressure obviously requires also including the VAT and other taxes (property, energy, ...)

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Re:The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess by vidarh on Thursday March 23, 2017 @08:41AM (#13939220)

It's just semantics, but it confuses matters because most people don't include the payroll tax amount when talking about tax rates. I agree it plays into the tax pressure, but it makes it necessary to be very precise when describing it or you end up with confusion like the one above...

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Re:The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess by alkonaut on Thursday March 23, 2017 @08:49AM (#13939257)

Indeed, that's why I tried to list it as clearly as possible. Obviously we could essentially make income tax 0% in Sweden over night, by just moving it to payroll tax. But no one would argue Sweden was some kind of tax haven. So income taxes are relevant when discussing salaries (because really what you take home is the key figure). But for tax pressure you can't discuss just income taxes.

I don't know what the grandparent poster was trying to say "employer pays $1k payroll tax so you make $9k"? Just shows how confusing this is (apparently)

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Re:The Gig Economy Celebrates Working To Excess by vidarh on Thursday March 23, 2017 @09:09AM (#13939390)

> Obviously we could essentially make income tax 0% in Sweden over night, by just moving it to payroll tax. But no one would argue Sweden was some kind of tax haven.

Denmark is an example of the opposite of this: Employer social security contributions make up 0.8% of total tax wedge, and they've rolled all of the employee contributions into the income tax, which makes Danish income tax look really high compared to most other European countries that have much higher employer contributions, and presumably contributes to the idea that the Nordic countries are particularly high tax, while Denmark overall is actually roughly average for OECD.

> I don't know what the grandparent poster was trying to say "employer pays $1k payroll tax so you make $9k"? Just shows how confusing this is (apparently)

He clearly misinterpreted you and though $8k was your gross salary, rather than gross salary + payroll tax, hence my original comment to him.

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