Self Employment Tax Lawyers in Jackson County

In Jackson County, Missouri, a few different taxes are enforced on employees, and subtracted from their gross pay during each pay period. The examples that most people are acquainted with are the taxes imposed to fund Medicare and Social Security, which get their funding mostly from these relatively small pay deductions.

Individuals who are self-employed are still liable for these taxes, and are responsible for figuring out how much they owe.

Usually, it's the employer who does all the calculations, deciding what deductions need to be made from a worker's paycheck to cover his or her tax liability. But if you are your own boss, you have to do this, and confirm that your figures are accurate.

Self-Employment tax obligations in Jackson County, Missouri

If you own a sole-proprietorship, or work mainly as an independent contractor, you need to pay the "self-employment tax" if you derive any significant amount of income from self-employment. You must pay these taxes if your income from self-employment is more than annually.

Employees in a regular employer/employee relationship do enjoy one significant perk that the self-employed do not: their Social Security and Medicare contributions are matched by their employers. So, if you pay in Social Security and Medicare taxes with every paycheck, your employer has to match that. This effectively doubles your contribution to these programs, without doubling their financial burden on you.

However, if you are a self-employed business owner in Jackson County, Missouri, you are responsible for both the employee and employer contributions to Medicare and Social Security. This essentially doubles your self-employment tax rate.

The self-employment tax rate is 15.3% of all self-employment income, assuming your income from self-employment exceeds per year in Jackson County, Missouri. But half of your self-employment tax liability can be deducted from your income tax. This results in a slightly reduced income tax bill, which partially offsets this additional tax burden. It essentially means that the self-employment tax only applies to 92% of your income, as opposed to all of it. This means that your effective self-employment tax rate is about 14%, as opposed to over 15%.

Can a Jackson County, Missouri Tax Attorney Help?

Self-employed individuals in Jackson County must ensure that they keep good, thorough financial records. This makes it much easier to determine what you owe, and, if you need a tax attorney, it makes it easier for them to help you with your legal tax issues.

So, if you have some trouble figuring out what you owe in self-employment taxes, for whatever reason, chances are good that a qualified tax attorney in Jackson County, Missouri can help you with much trouble, and can provide you with good legal and financial advice, which can help you head off much more serious legal and financial issues.