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Comment by ioulian | Hacker News Reader

Slightly off topic, but I'm from Europe, and when you are saying "you get $15 an hour", do you include taxes or not and how much taxes do you have there?

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From Europe too, they have progressive system same as we do, if you earn below certain threshold you pay no taxes, and amount specified $15/hr is before tax. Someone from US can probably elaborate on the exact numbers where you start paying the tax, as far as I know it depends if you have children etc.

Yes, hourly earning in the US is customarily gross earning (before taxes).

The median rule of hourly earnings to yearly earnings is 40 hours/week and 50 weeks/year, which results in every $1/hour == $2000/year in earnings.

For $15/hour, that's about $30,000. For a single person in California, without dependents and claiming themselves for one exemption, it would be 4,264.50 (14.22%) in Federal taxes and 579.35 (1.93%) in State taxes for a total of 4,843.85 (16.15%) in taxes.

Calculator: https://www.tax-brackets.org/californiataxtable

50 weeks a year? That is only 2 weeks off!

50 paid weeks per year. If you're lucky, you have paid holidays and paid vacation time.

Many people in the US don't even get that. Having two weeks vacation is usually waved in peoples faces as an incentive not to leave after a few years of full time employement.

The $15/hr figure is gross before any taxation and before any payments into insurance/etc

Presuming the previous lives in Allentown PA (ABE2 fulfillment center?), and presuming 2000 hours of work per year at $16/hour ($32,000/year), the tax calculator I found online says that taxes and social security add up to around $5222. $500 less under the tax changes Trump passed for next year.

So after taxes around $13.40 to $13.70 per hour.

I am indeed at ABE 2. Just FYI.

Lucky guess on my part. I travel to different FCs every week.

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