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The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

marcbarros.com

31–40 of 105 posts

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also like to see some examples. If you're just writing code all day, you have an awfully low overhead. I lose over half of my side income after I hit a certain point that's covered by my deductions, at which point I simply stop doing side work.

In the US if you have a mortgage and/or office in your house you can take additional deductions. Contributions to an individual 401k are deductible.

Certainly. And I do that. But after a point, you're losing a ton of money by not having enough deductions to cover your income.

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#32
"This unexpected success is just unbelievable. When we video chat, we still want to pinch ourselves through the monitor.

Peldi started Balsamiq on nights and weekends, and now it is supporting half a dozen families.

We were lucky to able to learn so much in our former jobs at Macromedia and Adobe. If he hadn't had the courage to leave, if the stars hadn't aligned just right"

If that is not a real, tangible definition of a successful startup, I do not know what one would be. Having been part of at least one failed side venture startup, I know how hard it is to build a product and how much harder it is to build the right team.

https://blog.supportbee.com//2010/12/02/delivering-wow-custo...

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#33
post #21

Who manages to only save 6% of their salary? For $75,000/year that's a measly $4,500. For someone working in tech on a good salary this should be closer to 50%, easily. Even paying a high rent, and heading out every night one should be saving at least 25%.

People who have expenses like child care, mortgages, car payments, unexpected medical bills, don't contribute to a 401K through automatic payroll deductions, or who just don't budget as well as they might.

The average savings rate from 1959 to 2014 was 6.82%. [1]

[1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savin...

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#34
post #9

There's not a single mention of taxes in the article. I don't think that the average employee is aware that an entrepreneur/founder/self-employed person can save a lot of tax if they structure it right and are meticulous about it. A self-employed person earning $70K a year can be better off than an employee earning $100K.

Can you expand upon that? I am always looking to reduce my taxes. I got killed with my 1099s this year.

If you're legitimately self-employed (see second paragraph), you should be able to deduct all your business expenses - home office, hardware, software, phone, travel, advertising, legal fees, etc. - on your Schedule C. You can also set up a self-employment retirement plan (SEPP IRA) and contribute to it.[1] You'll need good records in case the IRS questions your expenses, and you'll need to keep your work life separate from your private life (e.g., your home office space must be used solely for work; if you use your car for both business and personal trips, you'll need to log your business mileage).

I'm assuming your work is legitimate self-employment, i.e., the people who pay you do not control your hours, tell you how or where to do your job, etc. If that's not the case, the law probably considers you an employee rather than an independent contractor[2], and you should be paid as one (W-2) - and you could get in trouble if you try to deduct expenses that are only valid for an independent contractor.

(I'm assuming you're self-employed, not incorporated.)

[1] http://employment.laws.com/self-employment

[2] http://blog.intuit.com/employees/1099-contractor-vs-w-2-empl...

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#35
post #30
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't speak for American tax law, but in the UK there are some common methods of small business owners reducing taxes on income: Small payroll income so that you fall within a low income tax bracket. Top up salary with dividends as they have a much lower rate of tax. If you have a live at home wife, make sure she's employed by the company in some form, eg. you can pay her the minimum wage for secretarial duties. Id…

I would appreciate if someone could correct me on this as this is mostly from memory. I believe the using dividends for tax avoidance is either no longer effective or has been cracked down upon. You can also give less to the government on your VAT if your profit (or revenues, I can't remember which!) is below 150,000 GBP. Rates vary between 9% and 15%.

Yep, they crack down on stuff all the time. Still slightly worth it as far as I know. You pay standard 20% income tax on the first £32k (with first ~£10k tax-free), then 40% upto £150k, 45% over that. Whereas with dividends you pay 10% on the first £32k income (minus allowances), 32.5% on everything upto £150k, 37.5% over that.

So it's still worth it, but not quite as much as it used to be before IR35.

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#36
post #21

Who manages to only save 6% of their salary? For $75,000/year that's a measly $4,500. For someone working in tech on a good salary this should be closer to 50%, easily. Even paying a high rent, and heading out every night one should be saving at least 25%.

I've never met a person that could save 50% of their income that wasn't making $250k+.

If you're living in California and making $125,000 per year at a job, you're paying $33,000 in income taxes alone. Your 50% savings rate would be $62,500 - after taxes you have $92,000, so the person can live off of $30,000 per year. Rent alone can easily run $1,500 to $2,500 per month. This is an impossible scenario without even getting into the real costs of existing (ie bills, families, debts, vehicle & getting to work, accidents, problems, charity, social life, doing things).

My ex, who lives in Los Angeles, and makes $70k per year in the medical field, can't save more than $400 to $500 per month max after all costs and taxes. That savings is inevitably slashed in half due to once-per-year events that cost a few thousand dollars to fix. Her only salvation is her 401k.

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#37
post #9

There's not a single mention of taxes in the article. I don't think that the average employee is aware that an entrepreneur/founder/self-employed person can save a lot of tax if they structure it right and are meticulous about it. A self-employed person earning $70K a year can be better off than an employee earning $100K.

Can you expand upon that? I am always looking to reduce my taxes. I got killed with my 1099s this year.

(Sorry in advance for this long, rambling response) This applies to the US and forgive me if you have already done some of this. The first step is to get your corporation set up (use an online service or an accountant). It's a bit of paperwork but you can do it for around $400. Once you do that you can open a corporate bank account. At that point you bill your clients as a corporation and provide them with your corporate tax ID instead of your personal SS. The money goes into your business account. Then to pay yourself, the next step is to setup payroll (easiest way is to use an online service like quicken payroll) which will run you about $50/month but will handle all of your withholding and tax filing requirements.

It's somewhat of a pain getting this all going but once you do, you are operating as a corporation. Corporations do not pay income tax as such - they do have some filing fee type of taxes, but basically the taxes you pay come out of your payroll. So you do not pay tax on income that your company earns until you withdraw it from the company account via payroll. However, you can spend directly from the corporate account on anything that is reasonably considered a business expense. Computers and equipment, of course, can be purchased. Your company can pay the phone bills, internet connection, travel expenses, business lunches, etc. You can also charge your company rent as well if you are working out of your home.

What happens is that you wind up paying yourself a meager salary on which you pay normal tax just like everybody else. So for instance, your company earns $80. You pay yourself a salary of $15k and the remaining $65k money is spent on operating expenses and is a tax write-off. You only pay tax on that $15k. You're likely to even get a small tax refund check instead of a huge bill from the IRS. In some extreme cases you might pay yourself even less, or even come in at a loss and pay no income tax. There is nothing illegal about this as long as your write-offs can be legitimately considered a business expense.

This is also great because with payroll setup you are in a position to pay employees and sub-contractors via payroll as well and eventually grow your company with the proper financial system in place.

I would highly recommend having an accountant set this up for you and file your taxes though because it is a ton of work and requires understanding the ever-changing tax laws.

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#38

This is very theoretical and I would say there are a lot of mistakes in the analysis I would look more simply at all the people I know that are entrepreneurs versus those that work in a job. At least 50 percent of the entrepreneurs have over $1 million In assets and in a few cases over $10 million Zero employees that I know have over $1 million in assets I think it is far more likely to be wealthy as an entrepreneur,…

It may depend on the ages of the employees that you know, since investments grow over time. Someone with a developer's salary can get a good fraction of a million dollars just by steadily contributing the maximum amount to their 401-K (plus company match) for 25 years. And, of course, you can save more of your salary in additional investments.

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#39
post #21

Who manages to only save 6% of their salary? For $75,000/year that's a measly $4,500. For someone working in tech on a good salary this should be closer to 50%, easily. Even paying a high rent, and heading out every night one should be saving at least 25%.

I suppose a single person with no debts whatsoever might be able to save 25% and live in a high rent area, or 50% and live in a lower cost of living area, assuming they are living in a no-income-tax state. But fewer than 25% of the population is debt free[1], and I'd guess the percentage of debt-free individuals capable of landing a $75,000 job out of college is even lower. Taking on any debt, or having any kind of "major" expense blows your computation apart.

[1] http://hosted.ap.org/specials/interactives/_business/debt_ad...).

Re: The ROI on being an entrepreneur vs. an employee

#40
post #21

Who manages to only save 6% of their salary? For $75,000/year that's a measly $4,500. For someone working in tech on a good salary this should be closer to 50%, easily. Even paying a high rent, and heading out every night one should be saving at least 25%.

People who have expenses like child care, mortgages, car payments, unexpected medical bills, don't contribute to a 401K through automatic payroll deductions, or who just don't budget as well as they might. The average savings rate from 1959 to 2014 was 6.82%. [1] [1] http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/personal-savin...

These days, student loans can also be a significant expense.
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