Hacker News Reader

It wasn't economical for the statistician, since he was making more than he could possibly make doing this. It would likely be economical for many other people, however.

He said he could make $600/day doing this. Even if you only do this 5 days a week and give yourself 2 weeks of vacation, you still end up making $150,000/yr ($600/day * 50 weeks/yr * 5 days/week). That's well above the national average for both the US and Canada.

View on HN

Another key advantage is tax arbitrage. If you can make $800/day, that's because you have a certain skill set, you can't send a random college student in your place to collect your earnings for one month and pay almost no taxes. You have to pay your taxes on one $150k income.

With progressive taxation, if you get 12 students to redeem 1/12th of your winnings (for say 5%), you're paying taxes at the lowest level (likely even 0%) rather than the 35+% you would be if you had to claim 150k on a single tax return.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com