dagblog - Comments for "One person shop guy complains about payroll tax......"

Well that is reasonable but

erica20 — Sun, 07 Oct 2012 01:27:00 +0000

In reply to Perhaps this small business

Well that is reasonable but it seems to me in this day and age the guy could easily close the gap with 1099 contractors....unless as you suggest and I suspect, the business model or leadership (or possibly economic conditions) are not in place to allow for expansion.

Of course. We don't have a

Aunt Sam — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 19:05:58 +0000

In reply to Then state, city &

Of course. We don't have a state income tax so that is off my radar. But, we do have state unemployment tax, which keeps increasing due to the flagrant abuse that the state enables (that's fodder for another blog methinks.)

Then state, city &

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:55:18 +0000

In reply to Perhaps this small business

Then state, city & unemployment taxes, plus provisions to maintain the employee.

You're talking about a typically 60% overhead on an employee. That's not all the fed's doing but worth paying attention.

Perhaps this small business

Aunt Sam — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:44:13 +0000

In reply to One person shop guy complains about payroll tax......

Perhaps this small business owner was addressing the issue that the payroll taxes to hire an employee are the budget breaker and therefore renders him unable to afford to expand. However, if an employee cannot deliver the ability to increase business to cover his/her costs to company, then either your product/services market share is not conducive to expansion and/or your not marketing and/or providing quality product/service.

Currently, he/she only has to pay his self-employment and social security taxes for self.

If you are self-employed, your Social Security tax rate is 10.4 percent and your Medicare tax is 2.9 percent on those same amounts of earnings but you are able to deduct the employer portion.

Well, on the other hand,

artappraiser — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 17:24:30 +0000

In reply to Maybe I was too harsh. I

Well, on the other hand, nobody forces anyone to incorporate. (Actually, I knew a well-to-do art dealer who switched to being un-incorporated for few years for tax benefits when laws changed, according to his tax lawyer's advice. The tax lawyer said he'd have to get an appraiser to appraise all his inventory to do this, and pay transfer taxes on same, is why I know. ) But I think the amount of work that your basic Mom and Pop has to do to be a corporation, and the frustrations they inevitably have with government agencies, makes them tend to sympathize with Republican memes, and also to think they are paying too many taxes/too much in taxes. People who have no experience with this should think of what it would be like to be visiting their local Department of Motor Vehicles for something every week (or these days, maybe more like, the local voter's registration office. )

Maybe I was too harsh. I

Michael Maiello — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 16:53:36 +0000

In reply to I can speak from some

Maybe I was too harsh. I definitely agree with artappraiser that things need to be simplified to save time and money and I agree with you that we'd have a more self-directed society with more ownership and fewer employees. In the end, though, owners and employees need to be treated equally. Some people don't want to be in charge, after all.

I think the biggest issue is

PeraclesPlease — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 13:15:17 +0000

In reply to I think you guys have it

I think the biggest issue is that the voice of small business owners is largely missing from the Democratic debate.

We do come across as anti-business because we don't articulate at a national level a combined compassionate worker-small business - up to large business arrangement.

Occupy Wall Street didn't address this, and if we're talking about people who lost regular jobs and had to strike out on their own, or just people trying to build something new, it's a huge problem.

I think you guys have it

erica20 — Sat, 06 Oct 2012 00:12:26 +0000

In reply to One person shop guy complains about payroll tax......

I think you guys have it right--the shock of sole proprietor taxes after being just a regular employee would be significant (most people don't realize that their employers pay some taxes on their behalf.) And the extra paperwork involved in the public company aspect must indeed be daunting.

But for the guy to blame his bad business decision on the government? And be partisan about it? Coming from an obvious devotee of the "party of personal responsibility," that seems like a pretty crappy level of personal responsibility to me!

I do not think that some

Richard Day — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 22:04:36 +0000

In reply to One person shop guy complains about payroll tax......

I do not think that some portion of the Dem Party really understand the problems of the small small business guy or gal.

For twenty-five years, I would have to pay the employer's portion of SS & Medicare and unemployment insurance and when I declared my 'profit' I would have to pay twice that amount.

And I recall being so happy to gross 60 grand after three or four years of catastrophe but the unemployment office would make me pay an additional four grand for someone who quit my employment.

I would never fight the issue and declare that the person quit.

I am talking about 1985 dollars; but rents and mortgage percentages were 12%; not four percent.

There are hundreds of thousands of shopkeepers out there with two or five or seven employees.

When a repub talks about 'small business' that arsehole is talking about an employer with fifteen hundred employees.

I think at one time I had twenty employees.

The problem is that one must gross hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars

in order to net $50,000.

And in that event, an extra 13% in those days went to SS etc...

Stilli did a blog on this at Cafe I think years ago.

Categorization can skew figures just like 'framing the issue' can.

The repubs never ever ever cared one goddamn about some employer with fifty employees.

That category has nothing to do with their philosophy.

the end

To address the other side of

Verified Atheist — Fri, 05 Oct 2012 20:24:49 +0000

In reply to One person shop guy complains about payroll tax......

To address the other side of your comment, Obama did not say during the debates that he would raise Small Business taxes. What he did say was that his definition of small business and Romney's differ, specifically, that he would not include Donald Trump as a small-business owner, or the owner of a NLB baseball team (IIRC). I.e., being a small business owner was as much about revenues as about the number of employees you have.