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by maxerickson 4510 days ago
How many off the books $30,000 jobs do you think there are?

I'm sure there are lots of them, but I wonder if there are so many that it is something to worry about.

2 comments

In "the trades", e.g. electrical and plumbing work, LOTS. Don't know about you, but my family pays in cash for that sort of work without asking any questions....

Elsewhere, well, look at e.g. Italy where I've read that the people don't view the central government as legitimate and evading taxes is said to be the national pastime. Read up on the tax police stopping cars in the industrial north and checking trunks.

Our current tax system is truly voluntary in a certain sense, and would seriously break down if we widely adopted such attitudes for whatever reasons.

How many off the books $30,000 jobs do you think there are?

Given the audience of this site, web design would be the obvious choice. But here are some more:

http://livesafely.org/financial-freedom/67-jobs-that-pay-und...

That's a list of roles that does nothing to establish that they provide opportunities for $30k and nothing to estimate how many such positions are available.

I'm not arguing that cash jobs are rare or nonexistent. I'm wondering how prevalent "really good ones" actually are.

($30k being a real good cash job is just like my opinion, but whatever)

It would be very difficult to count the number of people doing these jobs for cash since they aren't reporting the income, but it isn't hard to imagine that these jobs could pay 30k if you combine some of the lower paying ones (e.g. $10/hour of gardening and day labor for 60 hours a week), or if you have skills that pay more (I did test prep tutoring for $60/hour in college).