Most interesting part of the article: "So the net cost for the tip was about $22k. I paid for the vast majority of this with one month's consultancy beforehand."
Anyone care to explain how that is possible?
So, with a little planning, you can dodge at least the income tax portion.
Depends where you live, in the UK I pay a flat 20% (after income and expenses). My monthly costs in London add up to about $2k. So that leaves me about $15k. Not quite as much as the OP but give me a couple more years of experience and I'll be able to put my rates up.
-- No job-related health insurance.
-- As a contractor, I pay almost twice as much employment taxes as full-time employees in the US.
-- Business is sometimes sporadic
-- your next paycheck is not guaranteed.
However, all that is perfectly acceptable to me since in the end, I'm my own boss. There are only a few kinds of job offers I'd consider at this point since I'm very happy with being a freelancer. But don't take the $100 figure at face value -- add in taxes, business cycle, time needed for marketing and accounting, etc, and it's not as much as it seems.
> As a contractor, I pay almost twice as much employment taxes as full-time employees in the US.
As a small business owner in the UK I have free healthcare and pay slightly less tax than I would as an employee. I pay minimal NI contributions (about 40 GBP per month, I think), 20% corporate tax on earnings (after subtracting expenses and a token 7.5k salary) and zero tax on up to 35k of dividends per year.
Not impossible but not easy, exactly. If you take a year to plan it out I think you could set that aside, working in tech, but it's obviously not for everyone.