[boulos]

Fwiw, those are marginal rates and you deduct the “employer half” of self-employment taxes.

So a (filing single) contractor making 160,000 in California would pay more like $60k in total taxes (which is still 37.5% effective).

But given the number of UK folks for this topic, the “Social Security” and FICA amount (~15%, so nearly half of “tax”) is effectively similar to National Insurance.

[hervature]

Sorry, I thought I put marginal in there (that's why I mentioned brackets). There was lots of stuff I omitted like the SALT deduction. But I lumped all that stuff into "credits". For those reading, if you are paying 50% in tax in the US, you're probably doing something wrong even if all the marginal rates add up to that.