so, how much is the goverment killing you in taxes?

now i realise i am a server and that means that my manager isant going to stand at the door and say "you clamed 50$ give me 10$ in taxes, or what ever the rate is" but come on look at this.

my base pay is 2.13 an hour. whitch sucks

on the last pay check i worked 72.95 hours
that's 155.38 in gross pay for 2 weeks.

now, not only do thay tax that, thay also take out the tax rate for my tips i clame from that.

gross tips: 402.5

so at the end of the diductions i was left with 30.06 for my pay check for 2 weeks.

sucks.

so, um. is this normal? or does it just suck to be me?

You make $2.13 an hour?

that's way below minimum wage, for any state. Plus, not all people leave tips, so you are getting screwed.




I do odd jobs, so I don't really pay much in tax. F*** social security. I'm probably not going to get it when I retire, so why should I pay for it?

well, it's leagal in south carolina for servers. with the sitpulation that the employer will make up the difference up to 5.15 and hour if thoes tips arnt earned (or clamed, but that makes employers unhappy/is illegal).

Well, if you earn below the minimum amount taxable for the year, when you file you should get all of what you've paid in returned back to you.

My pay doesn't get taxed luckily. Yay for that whole untaxed education working thingy...

And around $2 an hour is a very common wage for a serving job.

This is yet another instance where you don't know what you're talking about. Minimum wage does not apply except in a very FEW states to servers. The state assumes that the extra wages are made up in tips. Which they almost always are.

And on topic, no, it's not unusual at all. You should be glad that they tax your check instead of your actual wages. The tax rate on "gifted income" is much higher than earned income. Not to mention if you earn enough on tips that it could overdraw your check in which case I don't think the IRS will say you owe money considering HOW the money is being taxed. So your return is fully tips + whatever is left over from taxes.

Last year I paid something like $17,000 in taxes

Waaaaaaaaah, I hate paying to improve the common good!

The government protects you from terrorists and commies and criminals and fixes your roads and builds your cities and delivers your mail and educates you and your children and many other things too numerous to mention. They sort of need money to do that. :\

Pffft... no, they don't, silly!

Yeah, about half of it is to improve the common good. The rest is to pay for greedy *** representatives.

Remember kids: Friends don't let friends do socialism.

I never worked as a server, so I'm not familiar with the exact conditions. I'm not omniscient.

however, I do know that passive income (such as money from rents, your assets, etc.) is not as highly taxed b/c there are a ton of legal shelters and loopholes availible to exploit. Simple employees have no real tax benefits as compared to business owners and investors. This is why the rich pay little in forms of tax and the middle class ends up carrying the poor. I love it.

Oh you make me laugh Page. I'm liberal and even I know that 'rich pay little' is bull****.

They only pay over 50% in income taxes.

I lose about $100 out of every check.

However, I'll probably get about $45 of that x how many checks at the end of the year...

I'll get most of my state incometax back, and about 80% of my federal...

Social Security and Medicare I'll more than likely NEVER see again.

It's easy for you to say it's bull****, but the burden of proof is on you.

I know a guy who is currently a landlord. He gets a ton of money from rents and pays little in taxes, and its completely legit. He pays no social security tax, and he paid more tax when he worked as a bartender. He gets nearly all of his income as dividends from his personal corporation that he set up.

Wow $2.13 an hour?! Are you an illlegal alien? That seems rediculously low...

I have never heard of a legitimate worker making less than the equivalent of $US5.50 an hour down here.

Service Industry people make less, because of tips.

In fact, your buddy's C-Corporation pays income taxes on its profits, then he gets to pay an additional 15% in dividend taxes. Any money he receives in dividends is effectively taxed at a minimum of 30%.

Yes, the burden of proof is on me, when your friend makes a lot of money and pays a little taxes.

Don't you think it's odd that you aren't giving any specifics? You know, some numbers?

wow more reasons why I love Canada. We get almost all of our pay checks, mostly all that is taken off is EI.

If I could look around and see the good the government was doing with my money and not the bad, maybe I'd be more inclined to agree with you. But the point is that they waste the VAST majority of that (and I spent 4 years working for the feds and I know wtf I'm talking about). Remember, that $17k was *just* the federal tax. That's already over 30% of my income, and it didn't include one lick of state or local taxes. For example, 8.6% off the top of everything I purchase. Even more for vehicles. Registration costs for vehicles are $50 a year and they make you buy new plates every couple of years. State excise taxes cost me almost $1500 this year, and I'm paying almost $200 PER MONTH in property taxes alone. They just raised the state gas tax by another 9.5 cents per gallon, but at the same time they are blaming the damn saudis for the high prices. Talk about grinding salt into an open wound.

They also have a freaking 6% USE TAX, get a load of this: Basically, anything that you owned prior to entering the state, or that you aquired in another state, OR that was given to you AS A FREAKING GIFT is taxed at over 6% just for the "privilege" to use your own personal property.

Before you guys go around spouting about how all the tax money goes to good things like roads and schools, take a good look at your roads and your school districts. Take a good look at what the government is *actually* spending the vast majority of our money on (and no, it's not roads or schools). We're dropping planesful of condoms on other countries who won't use them anyway. We're fighting a war against another country on false premise. Our lawmakers have the ability (and take advantage of it yearly) to raise their own paychecks. We're at a few thousand times the rate the original Americans were taxed when they started the revolutionary war. And before you give me that crap about how we have the "right" to elect our own representatives, show me an example of the last time you had an opportunity to pick someone that ACTUALLY represented you.

Nah, I'm not bitter.

It's not about how much you are taxed, it's about the tax breaks and loopholes. The rich (by power of corporation) have access to a lot of loopholes and tax breaks that they can exploit. Remember, the rich don't work for money, they have people work for them and/or have money work for them. They don't collect a paycheck, they get their money in other ways. these other ways make all the difference.


Simple wage earners often have their entire income arrive by paycheck. There are no real loopholes or signifigant tax breaks with income that is acquired in this manner, so they get it up the a**.

Yoshi: I don't have access to my friend's books, so I can't provide numbers.

Really? I know someone in Montreal who once told me that he loses about 53% of his paycheck in income taxes and an additional 15% in sales tax. Of course, things may have changed since then (it was 2003) .

damn right.

I laugh at the so-called common good.

This is one American problem moving to Canada won't solve.

You assume the rich don't work for their money? There are tons of rich people who make their money off a salaried/commissioned job or whatnot. Sure the the really wealthy usually own businesses, but that doesn't mean their arent a ton of filthy rich people who make their money from a job.

And I'm sick of hearing about all your "tax loopholes". To me, it sounds like you really have no clue what these "loopholes" are at all. I really don't think you know what your talking about. Not that I do, but still.

I'm not sure you know what you are talking about, I have the feeling you are just spewing forth the crap you've been shovelled by your liberal instructors Regardless, I'm considered "rich" in that I'm in the top 20% of wage earners. That may seem *really good* to you, but they take away so much of it (over 30%) so that in reality, I'm not that much higher up. I just pay way more in taxes. Further, since I'm self-employed, I have to pay every expense that is usually taken up by others' employers - half of social security (normal jobs you pay 7.5%, your employer pays 7.5%, in my case, I have to pay the full 15% [it's actually a bit higher than that now]), medical insurance (there goes $150/month), retirement (nope, don't have any), all my own equipment (vehicles, computers, internet access, etc.).

Now, I'm not complaining about my job (much), but I will tell you that the stuff you have been told is innaccurate. I work my *** off on a daily basis. I used to think that the harder I work, the more money I could make. I have gone from nothing when I graduated high school and joined the AF for $800/month to being in the top 20% of the country in the past 10 years, and it's becoming increasingly clear that if I work 20% harder, I will not get 20% more money. In fact, if I work much harder and increase my money much more, I will bump myself (yet again) to the next tax bracket, therefore taking away even more of my incentive to work.

The way our tax system is set up is completely whack - there is no incentive to work harder and make more money, because they just take more - and when I mean more, I mean not only more in absolute dollars but more in a PERCENTAGE of what you make. So you can never get "ahead" so to speak.

Yes, you can.

I'm an independant consultant for two of my jobs and don't pull in enough to have to declare the income. My other job is cash/under the table, so I don't pay any taxes on it at all.

Name some of these incredible corporate tax loopholes.

Then consider that the top 5% of income earners gross around 30% of the nation's income, but pay over half of the total federal tax burden.[1] It seems that even The Rich™ don't know as much as you do about these amazing tax loopholes.

Exactly what I was going to say next.

I had to pay like $80 this spring for money I don't even have access to That burnt quite a hole in my pocket, considering I only got $120 a month from CSN while I was in school.

I really hope that I won't have to tax for the money I get while I'm doing my military service.

Paid about $120 in taxes on my last paycheck.

heres where being an independent contractor for the gov. comes in handy

paid $112 out of a $760 check last week

$897.60 <-- Gross
----------
$055.65 <-- FICA-OASDI
$013.01 <-- FICA-HI
$068.68 <-- FEDERAL S-02
$041.76 <-- STATE S-00 (+006.78 (STATE S-02))
$013.02 <-- COUNTY
----------
$712.26 <-- Net

They'll be an extra +30 taken out starting 07/01 for benefits.

I only make about $160 a week, and out of that $160 I get about $140 after taxes...but I get most of it back at the end of the year, so I can't complain. I'm sure I'll complain a lot more once I get a car that needs payments.

At my theater job, I lose typically about 1/6 of my paycheck to Medicaid, withholding, and Social Security.

At my job for my dad, I typically pay about $1,000 at the end of the year (I simply save money for taxes instead of losing a percentage).

Okay, so you grossed $557.88 for two weeks and netted $432.56 having a total of $125.32 withheld for taxes of which you might very well get back some at the end of the year. You're making it sound like you only got paid $30 when in actuality you got paid over $400. And, if you do like most servers, it's doubtful that you claimed all of your tips.

edit - and an oversight on my part is that that money isn't all your Federal Taxes either. Depending on where you live you have State, unemployment, social security, medicare, etc.

Read Robert Kiyosaki's Own Your Own Corporation

It's all in there.





I consider those people to be upper middle class.

no, I despise liberal instructors and the whole educational system in general. I've learned more on my own than I ever have from a classroom.

To me, you're upper middle class and are experiencing "bracket creep.", where the harder you work, the more you make, and the more you make, the more you are taxed. It's a system set up to screw you.

And some of you are forgetting that there are other ways to make a living than by being an employee and collecting a paycheck. Does Donald Trump have a job where he works for someone else? hell no--- he typically gets money by building awesome buildings and then leasing out space. He's not an employee-- he's a business owner in the sense that he is in the development business and calls the shots and organizes everything, and he's also an investor since he makes money by holding his buildings and leasing out space. That's not to say that he doesn't work hard--- he does-- but the point I'm trying to make is that if he can do it, any of us can do it, too. You CAN get ahead--you just need the knowledge and the balls to try.