
Ask HN: Employee vs. W2 Contract vs. 1099 Contract Rates - 100-xyz
Hi,<p>I moved back to the USA after 10+ years in China, so a little out of touch with the IT market.<p>Recruiters have been contacting me for W2 and 1099 rates.  I&#x27;ve looked online, but its too general.<p>Any tips from folks here?  I am aiming for a full time position at 150000 USD per year with benefits.  How would I then calculate my equivalent W2 and 1099 rates?<p>Thanks.
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techjuice
W-2 would be $150,000/year, if you are living in a popular metro area and you
are a senior engineer you should look to increase the salary, insure you are
also getting RSUs, signing bonus, benefits, and more if possible.

1099 would be $300,000/year minimum ($144.23/hour, round this up to $145 an
hour - $301,600/year or $150 an hour - $312,000/year)as you will need to pay
for you own benefits.

These benefits could be vacation, sick days, equipment (you can expense this
on your taxes), travel (you can charge (you client for driving to and from
work), pay quarterly taxes, hire sub-contractors, pay medical, vision, dental,
life insurance, 401k, etc. Though, you would normally be better off running
your own business (LLC or Inc) to take full advantage of the benefits you
would get as a business vs an individual (more tax and business benefits that
do not exist for an individual).

You will also need to work on getting additional customers to insure you do
not have only one customer in case they pay late, go out of business, "want to
change direction", etc. to decrease your risk. Though, in an ideal situation
you would have employees or contractors that you could contract out work to,
while you focus on gaining more business and/or building products and services
(upgrade from the hourly rate situation), and make money off the passive
income of your workers which would enable you to pay them more over time and
grow your business to stay competitive.

Insure you check the tax brackets for 2019 [https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-
provides-tax-inflation-adju...](https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/irs-provides-tax-
inflation-adjustments-for-tax-year-2019)

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pydeveloper22
Thanks.. This is helpful info

