[jermaustin1]

I'm not an accountant or tax lawyer, so this isn't advise, only my back of the envelope calculation, not even using things like the 172 deduction, or business expenses, but my estimate was actually way off almost double.

Gross Income: $112k

- SEP IRA 25%: -$28k

- Owner Health Insurance: -$15k

- 199-A Deduction (20%): -$12k

Total business income for taxes: $47k

- Married Filing Jointly Deduction: -$24k

- Total taxable income: $23k

Tax on $23k (10% of first $20k, 12% of next $3k): $2360

[mNovak]

With S-corps you do have to actually pay yourself wages, thus incurring some FICA taxes. Rule of thumb I believe is 50% of net income, up to ~$100k. Given that, you can then also contribute (and deduct) as the company up to 25% of salary towards 401k

Another gem many people don't know about is "Increasing Research Activities", for certain industries this essentially translates to 5-10% of your total payroll becoming a credit. That's huge.

[jermaustin1]

I was doing my estimation based on an LLC, since most people don't set up S-Corps. I do operate through as an S-Corp, and I pay myself ~60%, and put 20% into my SEP-IRA.

[markdown]

> Owner Health Insurance: -$15k

WTF? Who pays $15k PER YEAR for health insurance? That's nuts. In most countries USD$15k would pay for healthcare for 2 or 3 people for their entire lives.

[jermaustin1]

$15k is a cheap family policy in most of the country. My wife and I pay $24k/year for the cheapest silver option with a low deductible. My wife gets pneumonia and bronchitis almost annually, and every few years gets hospitalized. On top of that, she has 5 medications she takes for her asthma and allergies that without insurance would add up to almost $1000/mo, so sure we could go uninsured and save close to $12k/year, but the second she gets pneumonia and ends up in urgent care or the ER, we've lost all of the savings. And that is just her, I have to get my blood drawn quarterly for a thyroid condition, and each time they bill that to the insurance it's $1600.

So sure $15k is ridiculous to pay for health insurance, but in the US, its the cheap option for a family.

[LyndsySimon]

That’s actually fairly “cheap”, if it’s covering more than one person.

For a brief period I lived in Virginia and had no medical coverage through my employer. The legal minimum coverage was $1,400 / month for my family of four... and it was basically worthless; I would have had to have paid out something like $40k in a single year for medical services before I would have broken even.

[mikeyouse]

I'm privy to my company's books to see the employee cost (free for the employee, usually ~$150/month to cover their family as well) as well as the total cost for all of our employees across several states. We have very high quality insurance as standard, and the full coverage plans are more like $20k - $25k/year. It's completely out of control.

[vxNsr]

> In most countries USD$15k

is more than they make in their entire lives.

Trying to compare US COL to "most countries"

And if you wanna only look at western countries that's obviously demonstrably false.

Whatever people pay as part of the healthcare tax is gonna come out to about $15K for someone who is making $100K in most EU countries.

[geerlingguy]

I'm currently paying over $2K USD monthly, and that's cheap for my area (family plan) :-/

[0xfeba]

That's not uncommon. US healthcare is expensive. People don't realize socialized healthcare would likely not change their paychecks negatively.

[bluekite2000]

Do you use a service for bookkeeping?

[jermaustin1]

I do not. Bookkeeping for a small business really doesn't take much time. I spend about 2 hours a month working the books, then come January, I have my accountant's clerk come back and do a final pass over everything to prep for taxes.