payroll

[Derek Atkins]

Quoting Thomas Bushnell BSG <tb at becket.net>:

> Andrew Sackville-West <andrew at farwestbilliards.com> writes:
> 
> > Seems to me there's really only a handful of ways to tax income:
> >
> > -- a flat % tax on all income (in US thats medicare)
> >
> > -- a flat % tax on a part of income (in US that's social security)
> >
> > -- a graduated % tax on all or part of income (US income tax)
> >
> > -- a unit price (?) tax on hours worked or some other non-income based
> > value (in US, typically workers compensation -- my jurisdiction is
> > some many $ per hour worked)
> 
> This is true, more or less.
> 
> The US withholding tables are just that: tables, which are sometimes a
> little different than what formulas would produce.  Indeed, they don't
> even have formulas.  Employers are required to withhold the amounts
> listed in the tables, and that's that.

Actually, they DO have formulas, but they are only used for amounts greater than
$100k/year (or thereabouts).  However you are correct that when the amount
falls into the table it is supposed to use the table value.  It would be useful
to know how QB or other apps do it -- do they encode the tables themselves or
just the formulae?

-derek

-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available