Re: Conservative = Statist
- From: Sawfish <mtn@xxxxxx>
- Date: 25 Mar 2006 18:50:51 GMT
Joe Bernstein <joe@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Followups set. I can't imagine that all five groups include people
posting in this subthread. I'm unable to guess which group the person
I'm addressing reads. Please add that if you find anything worth
conversing about here; meanwhile I set followups to include the
only group in the list that *I* read.... Anyway.
What follows concerns US experience; I've no idea how things are
in other countries.
In article <1142810145.286195.42640@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
mowhak <mowhak@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
-let's say if this one boss e.g. is just providing temporary workers to
other companies, and for this service alone keeps half of their loan, I
would consider this guy as overpaid, while there is a fat chance that
the workers who are nothing but modern slaves do not get what they
would deserve.
I don't know about *all* temporary services, but I used to do temp
work myself mostly in accounting-related stuff. And that included
times when I actually had the job of printing up the check that
paid the agency that paid me, and even times when other people's
pay was also covered by invoices I handled.
The cut was nowhere near 50%. Even though I worked for a famously
expensive agency.
I beg to differ. I am currently providing technical consultation and the
cut (I found out from the client what hourly rate my agency was charging,
and can compare this to my hourly rate) is currently 40%. IN fact, since
the Microsoft contractor decision has frightened corporations into using
agnecies exclusively, and never taking on independent contractors, as they
had earlier in my career, the best I've been able to beat them down to is
21%.
In these cases they often provide the initial lead, you basically sell
your skills to the client, the agency then pays you on a regualr schedule
(this can be a distinct benefit), but you supply the SW, the office (if
off-site), etc. You pay your own travel expenses, etc. As a 1099 *I* come
up with the 7.5% of the payroll tax that a W2 does not pay.
Is it worth it? In some cases it's accpetable, in others, espcially where
there are few competing agencies, it can get pretty coercive. This has
led to the rise of "pass-thru" agencies. But as long as corporations want
the agency personnel to be W2 emplyess of the agency, pass-thrus won't
work, either.
There is definitely a squeeze going on in the technical sector.
Maybe the industrial places are different, I dunno. Then again,
they provide transport so they have more expenses. But in office
work, I'm fairly certain a cut in the neighbourhood of 25-30% is
typical. Out of that, let me think, just over 5% goes to the
employer's portion of Social Security, [1] and then there's the
unemployment taxes; so basically we're talking 1/5 to 1/4 as the
agency's cut.
As it happens, during my temp years I also worked free-lance on
occasion. (My e-mail address derives from an *extended* free-
lance job.) I would have starved if I'd had to rely on those
jobs; even the bookstore covered my monthly rent only once. I'm
not a good salesman, nor a particularly good negotiator.
In addition, my free-lance jobs got me into tax trouble. I didn't
have the discipline to set money aside for taxes, and didn't have
any leverage to get my free-lance employers to provide me the
information I needed to file.
By law they have to supply the 1099, and I have never had one fail to do
so.
I set asdie 40% of my independent contractor checks for state/fed/local
taxes. I never miss quarterlies.
So. Sales, price negotiations, withholding, and bookkeeping.
Four things my agencies did for me better'n I did them for myself.
The way it has evolved over the last 6-8 years, Joe, the 1099 option is no
longer open. If I must be a W2 of the agency, then I cannot take my home
office as an expense, even if that is where the agency insists I do my
work.
I'm not trying to say they're all saints, or that temp agencies
are unmitigatedly good for the world, or anything like that. I'm
not even trying to say they were reliably good for *me*. I'm just
saying that your estimate of temp agencies' cut is, for the
agencies I'm familiar with, *wrong*, and your insinuation that
that cut is a bad deal for their employees is, to judge by my own
experience, also wrong.
In my experience, in technical consulting, in light of the Microsoft case
of 1996 (Vizcaino v. Microsoft "permatemp"), it is pretty marginal. If you
think 40% of your charged rate is worth the 7.5% payroll tax, plus regular
payment, then I guess it's OK.
Joe Bernstein
unable to *begin* to imagine how to make this even minimally
on-topic for all the groups involved. Sigh, let's see. OK,
it's a YASID, but I *think* it's a real YASID: a future in
which pretty much everyone is a contractor, even including
Catholic priests, and certainly including exerters of force.
The "Catholic priests" is the hard part - I mean, I'm pretty
sure that bit *isn't* in <Spin State> or <Iron Sunrise>, but
I don't remember <Snow Crash> at all well; still, seems more
likely to have been a short story somewhere. Possibly a setting
in which there was no longer a Papacy? Surely it's not "The Way
of Cross and Dragon" I'm thinking of, though at least if it were
that would be more clearly on-topic for alt.atheism. Anyone?
Or am I just confabulating this?
This still doesn't get us to rec.arts.movies.current-films,
unless whatever it is just happens to have been filmed recently.
But hey, I tried.
[1] Just to forestall any premature corrections. US Social Security
and Medicare are somewhere around .075 of the worker's wage, barring
various conditions unlikely to apply to an hourly temp worker.
If the worker's wage is .7 to .75 of the total bill, then .075 times
that will be .0525 to .05625. So *of the total bill*, employer's
share of these taxes is "just over 5%".
----
Joe Bernstein, writer joe@xxxxxxxxxxx
<http://www.panix.com/~josephb/> "She suited my mood, Sarah Mondleigh
did - it was like having a kitten in the room, like a vote for unreason."
<Glass Mountain>, Cynthia Voigt
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"If we use Occam's Razor, whose razor will *he* use?" --Sawfish
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