How I got wealthy without working too hard

Re:How I got wealthy without working too hard by stepbeek on Thursday November 18, 2021 @11:37AM (#29267389)

This sounds like it's specific to a particular market (and that market is the USA). My experience has been that being an employee (in the UK) resulted in significantly more taxes than being self-employed. Europeans almost never have comparable healthcare costs to the USA, so that part isn't universally true either.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:How I got wealthy without working too hard by throwaway894345 on Thursday November 18, 2021 @11:58AM (#29267641)

> being an employee (in the UK) resulted in significantly more taxes than being self-employed

Why would this be the case? I'm not challenging your claim, I'm just curious. Is the idea that the UK wants to give tax breaks to small businesses?

> Europeans almost never have comparable healthcare costs to the USA, so that part isn't universally true either.

Not sure about self-employment, but American professionals take home (i.e., after taxes, healthcare, and retirement/pension) considerably more than their European counterparts. To the parent's point, it's quite a lot more difficult for an ordinary (i.e., not-self-employed) American professional to get wealthy by following the approach outlined in this article, but it's quite a lot harder still for our ordinary European professional.

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Re:How I got wealthy without working too hard by stepbeek on Friday November 19, 2021 @09:52AM (#29277742)

The UK has a progressive income tax system (iirc up to 10k is tax-free, then 20% from 10-50k, then 40% from 50-150k and 45% for everything beyond that). This means that spreading tax liability between capital gains and income tax leads to a lower total tax bill.

You also get to write off business expenses and reclaim VAT (sales tax) as a business, which a normal consumer cannot do.

Your point about remuneration is spot on. But remote work for US clients is possible and I’ve found that they’re happy to pay close to US rates for UK remote.

[ Parent | on HN ]