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FutureMon
Dude Whats mine say?

join:2000-10-05
Marina, CA

FutureMon to dogma

to dogma

Re: Getting laid....off.

I'm really really thinking about telling them I just accepted another gig to walk away from this one.

After doing more calculations, I'd be roughly in the same financial situation I am now, but having had to leave all my family behind (including my daughter going to live with her mom 6 months earlier than planned).

I originally thought the per-diem was on top of my rate - not built into it, and the per-diem pay WOULD all be taxable if the IRS chose to deny my itemizations - leaving me in even worse shape.

- FM

dogma
XYZ
Premium Member
join:2002-08-15
Boulder City, NV

dogma

Premium Member

Here is the IRS's Max Per Diem for Oregon area's. »www.gsa.gov/portal/categ ··· y/100120

A.) A self-employed person can only use per diem for the meal costs.

B.) per diem rate can be used for the combined costs of Lodging and M&IE. However, the rates vary depending
on location. Use the rate for the area where your contractor spends the night. The rates for the different cities are available in IRS Publication 1542.

C.) Thus, as a 1099 guy, you are self-employed, and thus whatever they give you (except maybe meal cost) needs to be reported:
Your need to report the income earned (including per diem) and reimbursements on Schedule C as INCOME.

You then deduct the expenses you incurred as deductible expenses.

The difference is your net income, which is subject to income taxes at your marginal rate and the self-employment tax (whatever that is now) , which is calculated on Schedule SE.

Simple Example:
@ $50/hour x 40/hours/week x 50 weeks/year = $100,000.00
Deduct business expense (say $1500/mo x 12 = $18,000) $100K - $18K = $82K in taxable gross income that transfers to your 1040. You can then apply normal itemized deductions like the kid and head of house hold and whatever else. Lets say this totals $12,000. So now your taxable income is ($82K - $12K) $70K. Your head-of-household fed taxes would be $12,359, leaving you with $57,641.

But...it doesn't stop there. Remember, you are self employed and need to pay for your own social security/FICA, etc. That may run another 9% - 13%, or another $10K or so kicking your take home to $47,641.

It's important to point out that your living cost have been paid already in the Oregon 1099 scenario. So look at your current situation. look at your current take home pay. Remember, you are spending x amount of that to pay for your apartment, car, food, transportation, etc.

Lets say you are bringing home $60,000...BUT, of that bring home pay you pay ($1200/Mo x 12) $14,400/year for rent + ($400/mo. x 12 ) $4800 for food + $1,500/year for gas, which totals ($14K + 4.8K + 1.5K) $20,700.

Thus your $60,000 bring home is really ($60,000 - $20,700) $39,300. You would actually make $8K more in Oregon using those calculations (and remember, Oregon has no sales tax, which is an additional 10.5% discount of whatever you spend on yourself). Moreover, as a self-employed person, your deductible "expenses" may vary... You may claim much more than the amount I figured in business expenses. It could easily be twice as much **cough** cooked-up **cough** that you report, which could change your numbers dramatically.

Again, this is all off the cuff. I may be all wet with my tax assumptions and numbers. A tax professional is the way to go.

»docs.google.com/viewer?a ··· xCvfjHey

FutureMon
Dude Whats mine say?

join:2000-10-05
Marina, CA

FutureMon

Um, but we were going the W2 route - I would not be 1099'd or do the corp-to-corp.

Reason being I couldn't float all my bills until mid february when I got my first check (for a weeks pay).

- FM

dogma
XYZ
Premium Member
join:2002-08-15
Boulder City, NV

dogma

Premium Member

Hummm...right.

A.) Can they 1099 you AND give you some up-front payment?

B.) If you look at the link below, it seems the maximum they can per diem you is $186/day or $23.25/hr. They could increase your per diem, which could decrease your taxable revenue...

But read this:

The IRS allows a company who sends an employee to a distant place to work some latitude on how to reimburse that employee for that employee's "living expense" incurred at that distant location.

There are two ways of reimbursement or per diem. If the company chooses reimbursement, each employee will keep each receipt and upon their return from out of town file a claim for the money spent and document the cost with the receipts. This method results are no tax consequences to the employee.

Per Diem is where the company provides the employee with a set amount of money depending on IRS rules for each city in the USA and world wide. True per diem the company does not ask for or will receive any receipts from the employee accounting for the uses of money tendered to the employee. However, the employee must report the per diem as income and use his receipts to report his expenses on schedule 2106 attached to his own 1040 return.

I know that a great number of misconceptions exist about per diem an who is entitled to receive and how it is to be reported. Most people see it as a windfall unreported income when they receive more per diem than they have expenses or its a curse when they have more expenses than per diem.

The IRS says that if you have more expenses than per diem you can write off the company incurred expenses of your income. However, you must pay tax on the excess per diem you receive.

»docs.google.com/viewer?a ··· 5crf5zZg

FutureMon
Dude Whats mine say?

join:2000-10-05
Marina, CA

FutureMon

Problem is, I was under the original assumption that I'd be getting $50/hr, PLUS a per-diem allowance of up to $100/day.

Any other way it's just not worth it.

If I assume $2000/mo in "per-diem" expenses:
$500 apt
$600 food [150 wk]
$600 car [150 wk]
$300 one air-fare per month to go home [which is questionable]
= 2000.00

That's the equivalent of about $11.53/hr

$50/hr - $11.53/hr = $38.46/hr

A whopping $0.46 cents per hour increase from what I currently make. So as I said before, I'd be in the same boat financially as I already am, and outlaying all this extra cash just to be able to do it. Plus the added headache of having to file the extra form, and itemize, and hope the IRS doesn't decide to scrutinize my return.

If I didn't need a "home base" in California to visit my daughter, and for visitations with my son, I'd pick up roots, dump my apartment and go. That would net me an additional $1050/mo. But I can't. At least not until my daughter is out of school - which is in 6 months anyway.

- FM

jig
join:2001-01-05
Hacienda Heights, CA

1 recommendation

jig to dogma

Member

to dogma
don't forget your state income taxes, and the complication of paying in oregon and CA. not sure what the per diem consequences are there.

also, you mentioned that the kid would be staying with mom for 6 months - i don't know the code that well, but the kid may need to stay with you for more than 6 months in any taxable year in order for you to claim her as an exemption.

here's the easier way to do this. go buy turbo tax deluxe or borrow one from a friend. you have all the numbers and most of the details you'd need to run this as a thought experiment for 2010. turbo tax isn't perfect, but i believe it will be able to pretty clearly state the difference in the tax burden, and be able to evoke all the right questions as to what expenses there are and what's deductible. i think deluxe allows you unlimited access to states (plural) taxes.

i guess you're hard up for cash right now, but hopefully you can either find a friend with the program or purchase it at a store that will allow software returns, maybe with a 15% restocking fee once it's opened. hell, you may be able to find a cracked version online for all i know, but I wouldn't put in any information until after you updated/got the state downloads, and then i wouldn't allow a net connection until you were done running the experiment AND removing the program and the data.

wish i could help more. really too many details to get things right quickly/easily. however, if the numbers are fairly close to each other either way, then it's not a question about $$, it's about whether you need a job now and whether commuting to Oregon is a deal breaker. you seem to be finding reasons not to take the job... but i'd be loath to refuse it if it's going to allow you to earn income and SAVE income in the short term, even a little $$. you don't have to stay with them longer than you want to, and if a cherry job shows up in the LA area, the only thing that would stop you from taking the cherry would be if you were worried about how it would look on your resume/references list. but that's a future problem - best only to worry about it if it comes up. more important now not to be unemployed (if that's what you are - forgive my blissful vagueness as to the details)

FutureMon
Dude Whats mine say?

join:2000-10-05
Marina, CA

4 edits

FutureMon

Daughter plans on moving to her moms in June/July anyway - she wants to go to a special advanced high school in Van Nuys and her mom lives out there. This would have just pushed the timetable up. I already figured for 2011 she'd start getting claimed by her mom as I have had her to claim for the last 4 years or so.

Add to that turning my life into a whirlwind. Flying out Sunday, Flying back Monday, if an offer is presented turning around and flying back out on the 2nd to start work on the 3rd. With the holidays here (and still working up to the 30th) that doesn't leave me much time to deal with arranging things with my ex, or my current landlord, etc. etc. She might have an issue with the apartment being rented, but essentially vacant 28 days out of the month. It's just starting to feel like there are too many unknowns and it's a lot of pressure to put myself and my family under in such a short time frame.

Currently still have a job - but have been given my walking papers for the end of this month.

I've gotten pretty good with this worksheet I built in Excel to forecast expenses using combined federal/state/payroll taxes and such to the point where I can drop in a dollar amount "per hour pay" and see how much money I would have left at the end of the month after all my bills are paid for a standard 173.33 hour month.

Putting $50/hr in there made it look REAL GOOD. Until I added in the extra $1700-2000/month in expenses it would cost me to actually do it..

So yeah, I'm back to focusing on local opportunities. Have seen a lot of stuff going on in Irvine. And my last trip there to an agency had me going home at 5pm - and it only took me like 35 minutes...so the commute wasn't all that bad as I have always thought. Although the morning, I'm sure is quite different.

- FM

jig
join:2001-01-05
Hacienda Heights, CA

jig

Member

bird hand bush. i'm biased because i like oregon.
cmaenginsb1
Premium Member
join:2001-03-19
Palmdale, CA

1 recommendation

cmaenginsb1 to jig

Premium Member

to jig
said by jig:

don't forget your state income taxes, and the complication of paying in oregon and CA. not sure what the per diem consequences are there.

also, you mentioned that the kid would be staying with mom for 6 months - i don't know the code that well, but the kid may need to stay with you for more than 6 months in any taxable year in order for you to claim her as an exemption.

here's the easier way to do this. go buy turbo tax deluxe or borrow one from a friend. you have all the numbers and most of the details you'd need to run this as a thought experiment for 2010. turbo tax isn't perfect, but i believe it will be able to pretty clearly state the difference in the tax burden, and be able to evoke all the right questions as to what expenses there are and what's deductible. i think deluxe allows you unlimited access to states (plural) taxes.

i guess you're hard up for cash right now, but hopefully you can either find a friend with the program or purchase it at a store that will allow software returns, maybe with a 15% restocking fee once it's opened. hell, you may be able to find a cracked version online for all i know, but I wouldn't put in any information until after you updated/got the state downloads, and then i wouldn't allow a net connection until you were done running the experiment AND removing the program and the data.

wish i could help more. really too many details to get things right quickly/easily. however, if the numbers are fairly close to each other either way, then it's not a question about $$, it's about whether you need a job now and whether commuting to Oregon is a deal breaker. you seem to be finding reasons not to take the job... but i'd be loath to refuse it if it's going to allow you to earn income and SAVE income in the short term, even a little $$. you don't have to stay with them longer than you want to, and if a cherry job shows up in the LA area, the only thing that would stop you from taking the cherry would be if you were worried about how it would look on your resume/references list. but that's a future problem - best only to worry about it if it comes up. more important now not to be unemployed (if that's what you are - forgive my blissful vagueness as to the details)

Good advice on Turbo Tax, but with it online now he could go there an plug in the numbers for free, as long as he doesn't use it to generate a return.

FutureMon
Dude Whats mine say?

join:2000-10-05
Marina, CA

FutureMon

Well I sent them an email this morning. I didn't want to tell them (again) that the pay wasn't going to be enough (because for someone without as many financial issues as I have, it really was a killer rate), so I told them that I received an offer late last night from a prior interview, and that I would appreciate it if they would keep me in their system if or when I came back on the market for future opportunities.

They replied back with a thanks for letting us know and keep us informed of your status so that we may work together again in the future.

- FM

ohdan
join:2008-11-10
Adelanto, CA

ohdan

Member

I'm sorry things didn't work out for you. Good luck on the next one!

FutureMon
Dude Whats mine say?

join:2000-10-05
Marina, CA

FutureMon

If anyone here knows anyone who could make that move to the Portland area and is looking for work of that type. Talk to me. I told the agency I would refer others to them if I came across any.

- FM