[iopq]

You realize that the $80,000 includes completely free health care (otherwise $300 a month minimum, if not more if they offer a good plan) with no employee contribution, free dental ($20 a month?), $300 towards vision a year, minimal life insurance maybe, free meals at the office, etc.

Not to mention that you get sick pay, holiday pay, retirement account contributions, etc.

Including the benefits it easily adds up to $100,000 a year of benefits or more depending on how good the benefits are

Besides, if it's not a start-up you're easily making $130,000+ if you have a lot of experience

[jnbiche]

Not to mention the extra ~12% payroll tax that all freelancers are hit with (twice what employees pay).

Or the fact that a very large portion of your time as a freelancer has to spend with non-income earning activities (accounting, marketing, etc) if you want to have any chance of surviving as a freelancer.

60$/hr for a freelancer is equivalent to about 60,000-80,000/year. It's a decent income for some parts of the country, but not SF.

[wlievens]

Are there any payroll taxes on top of that salary number? Where I live (Belgium) there's a 33% (probably being lowered to 25% soon) social security tax paid by the employer.

[tsotha]

In the US your employer pays around 15% of your salary as tax. If you're not working for someone else that's an extra 15.3% you have to pay - it's called "self employment tax".

[zrail]

It's not an extra 15%. The total amount of Social Security and Medicare taxes is 15.4%, with the employer paying half and the employee paying the other half. When you're self-employed, you pay both halves. And the employer half is always deductible on your federal income tax, which reduces the sting a little.

[sokoloff]

Good actual data, though the total figure is 15.3%

NB: it drops to 2.9% (just the employer/employee portion of Medicare) after the cap, which is currently $118,500 for both 2015 and 2016. And then the employee portion of Medicare rises by 0.9% above $200K, but that's not specific to self-employment as it's the employee portion only.