Self Employment Tax Lawyers in Hopewell
In the U.S., Hopewell, Virginia included, almost everyone who is employed during most of their adult life is eligible for Social Security and Medicare benefits when they retire. These programs are supported by taxes deducted from the paychecks of most employees.
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 Hopewell, Virginia
If you mainly work as an independent contractor, or are the owner of a sole proprietorship, you have to pay what's regularly referred to as the "self-employment tax," if your annual income from self-employment is over .
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.
But, if you're self employed in Hopewell, Virginia, or anywhere else, you are required to make the employee AND employer contributions to Social Security and Medicare, effectively doubling your employment tax liability.
Currently, the self-employment tax rate in the United States is 15.30% of all income earned from self-employment in Hopewell, Virginia. Nonetheless, half of your hypothetical self-employment tax liability can be deducted from your income. This means that you only pay self-employment tax on about 92% of your income, which creates an effective self-employment tax rate of just over 14%.
Can a Hopewell, Virginia Tax Attorney Help?
If you work for yourself in Hopewell, you have to stay on top of your self-employment taxes, to avoid facing serious legal and financial issues later on. This means you need to keep excellent records of all your income and expenses, in case you need to seek the advice of a tax attorney: the more information you can provide your lawyer, the better he or she can help you.
Anyone having difficulty with figuring out what they owe in self-employment taxes in Hopewell, Virginia should seek the advice of a reputable tax attorney. Most tax attorneys also have a good knowledge of accounting, so making this determination probably won't be too hard for them. And on top of that, a competent tax attorney can give you objective and useful legal advice, which can help prevent more egregious issues from arising in the future.