But remember that there is non-billable work (accounting, etc.) and a 15.3% self-employment tax. And also remember that there are probably not 50 weeks of 40 hours/week at this company but rather short-term or part-time work. And you are paying for your own benefits.
I've found a good (albeit a bit conservative) rule-of-thumb is to convert the hourly wage into the yearly salary. Working as a consultant for $175/hour is similar to being employed at $175K/year.
EDIT: The U.S. federal self-employment tax for 2011 is 13.3% (15.3% was for 2010).
A minor correction: it's not as bad as 15.3%. The self-employment tax is really just the company share of FICA withholding (6.2%) plus Medicare withholding (1.45%) If you're an employee you pay 6.2%+1.45%=7.65% and your employer pays the same. If someone else (employer) is not paying the 7.65% then you do.
However, for 2011 the FICA rate for employees is 4.2% instead of 6.2%, so the self-employment tax remains effectively 7.65%. But that's only for the first $106,800 in earnings - everything above that is not subject to FICA and Medicare for employer and employee.
Well, it's 15% for FICA (employee + employer), but there's also normal income tax, which starts at 10% and gets up to 35%. And then the state and, depending on where you live, the city have income and/or payroll tax as well (usually in the single digits).
And on top of that the state income taxes in most states, and sales taxes that usually approach 8 or 9%, and property taxes on real estate (and autos where I live). Also if you manage to save anything after all that, you can look forward to paying dividend or capital gains taxes (a form of double taxation).
Most other countries have twice that sales tax, as well as having all those other taxes. The best rough estimate of taxation burden might be proportion of government spending of GDP, which IIRC is about 35% for US, and is lower than eg most European countries.
You need to take into account what you get in addition to what you pay.
In American those taxes provide a strong military. Most of the rest of the world are very poorly equipped by comparison. Other countries get health care and education.
Improving foreign policy would be a cheap way to reduce military costs - relying on a militia was the American tradition up until the Cold War and is indeed one of the reasons you have the right to arms.
Keep in mind that there are many tax tricks you can play here too, like paying yourself dividends and writing off a lot of expenses (speak to an accountant before doing so).
Also the overhead of running a corporation (including lawyer, accountant, payroll, and general insurance) is not much if you're making over $100/hr. It is certainly less than 26.7% (ie, $75 of every $175 minus 15.3%) worth. Most of these costs are fixed, not variable.
my wife is a cpa/cfp, and this is how i set up my company. i write off most stuff (car, office supplies, computer equip, internet, phone, etc), and pay out yearly dividends on top of a base salary. for a one-man corporation, the overhead can be really minimal. if you can get health benefits from your spouse and keep nearly 40 hrs week in billable hours, you'll never look back.
Depending on how many hours you bill, maybe. But if you have a steady client or two, bill 35 hours per week (conservative) and work 48 weeks, that's $294k. Yes there are some additional taxes (but only up to the first $105k or something) and keep in mind salaried employees pay half the "self employment" tax too..
Yep, my accountants rule of thumb is after deducting time for admin and other downtime you will be doing well to sell about 60% of your available billable hours. So that about ties up with what you are saying.
That would never work. You'd find some garbage in the output, or even worse, get a core dump due to n being undefined. I think you mean 2x * 1000. .... or I've been refactoring my code for too long.
But yes, this is generally the rule I use as well, take the hourly rate and double it and add a K (eg $30/hr = $60K)
Doesn't include holidays, sick leave or efficiency trade-offs (billable time vs maintenance, research). Personally I use an estimate of about 75% efficiency to get a realistic answer, so then your formula becomes 3/4 * x * 1000
So at $175/hr I'd expect something like 130,000 annually. Given that its said he's quite frugal and doesn't mind hard work, it could well end up being around the 250-300K, but I'd expect he'd end up burning out after a year or 3.
