Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: How big of a percentage of wages go towards Social Security?
In 2018, the Social Security Wage Base was $128,400 and the Social Security tax rate was 6.20% paid by the employee and 6.20% paid by the employer. A person with $10,000 of gross income had $620.00 withheld as Social Security tax from his check and the employer sent an additional $620.00. A person with $130,000 of gross income in 2017 incurred Social Security tax of $7,886.40 (resulting in an effective rate of approximately 6.07% - the rate was lower because the income was more than the 2017 "wage base", see below), with $7,886.40 paid by the employer. A person who earned a million dollars in wages paid the same $7,886.40 in Social Security tax (resulting in an effective rate of approximately 0.79%), with equivalent employer matching. In the cases of the $130k and $1m earners, each paid the same amount into the social security system, and both will take the same out of the social security system.
Though the Commonwealth government has its own tax laws, Puerto Ricans are also required to pay many kinds of U.S. federal taxes, not including the federal personal income tax for Puerto Rico-sourced income, but only under certain circumstances. In 2009, Puerto Rico paid into the U.S. Treasury. Residents of Puerto Rico pay into Social Security, and are thus eligible for Social Security benefits upon retirement. They are excluded from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and the island actually receives a smaller fraction of the Medicaid funding it would receive if it were a U.S. state. Also, Medicare providers receive less-than-full state-like reimbursements for services rendered to beneficiaries in Puerto Rico, even though the latter paid fully into the system.
In addition, because the cutoff point for income taxation is lower than that of the US IRS code, and the per-capita income in Puerto Rico is much lower than the average per-capita income on the mainland, more Puerto Rico residents pay income taxes to the local taxation authority than if the IRS code were applied to the island. That occurs because "the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico government has a wider set of responsibilities than do U.S. State and local governments." As residents of Puerto Rico pay into Social Security, Puerto Ricans are eligible for Social Security benefits upon retirement but are excluded from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) (Commonwealth of Puerto Rico residents, unlike residents of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and residents of the 50 States, do not receive the SSI), and the island actually receives less than 15% of the Medicaid funding it would normally receive if it were a state. However, Medicare providers receive less-than-full state-like reimbursements for services rendered to beneficiaries in Puerto Rico even though the latter paid fully into the system In general, "many federal social welfare programs have been extended to Puerto Rican ("sic") residents, although usually with caps inferior to those allocated to the states." A common misconception is that the import/export taxes collected by the U.S. on products manufactured in Puerto Rico are all returned to the Puerto Rico Treasury. That is not the case, as such import/export taxes are returned only for rum products, and even then, the US Treasury keeps a portion of the taxes.
The Commonwealth government has its own tax laws and Puerto Ricans are also required to pay some US federal taxes, although most residents do not have to pay the federal personal income tax. In 2016, Puerto Rico paid into the US Treasury. Residents of Puerto Rico pay into Social Security, and are thus eligible for Social Security benefits upon retirement. However, they are excluded from the Supplemental Security Income.
Most state and local government workers were eventually brought into the Social Security system under "Section 218 Agreements". The original 218 interstate instrumentalities were signed in the 1950s, and all states have a Section 218 agreement with the federal government's Social Security Administration.
The Social Security Handbook defines an "interstate instrumentality".
The provisions of Section 218 of the Social Security Act and the instrumentalities agreement and subsequent modifications determine Social Security and Medicare benefits or Medicare-only coverage for state and local government employees enrolled in state and local government retirement systems.
All state and local government employees hired since 1986, or whom are covered by Section 218 Agreements, participate in Medicare even if not covered by Social Security financial benefits. To see how state and local government employees are covered by Social Security and Medicare see the Federal-State reference guide appendix.
Other local and state employees were brought into coverage under a 1991 Social Security law that required these employees to join Social Security if their employer did not provide them with a pension plan.
Some state and local governments continue to maintain pension plans and have not executed Section 218 agreements; if so, those workers may not participate in Social Security taxation. (If workers have previously paid appropriate Social Security taxation or an equivalent, their Social Security benefits are reduced by a rule known as the Windfall Elimination Provision; there is also a similar Government Pension Offset for their spouses.)
The female breadwinner model, otherwise known as "Breadwinner Moms", takes place when the female provides the main source of income for the family. Recent data from the US Census stated that "40% of all households with children under the age of 18 include mothers who are either the sole or primary source of income for the family". 37% of these "Breadwinner Moms" are married mothers who have a higher income than their husbands, and 63% are single mothers.
In the UK the first £30,000 of severance pay is tax free. As stated above, the amount retiring MPs, or those who lose their seats receive, depends on how old they are and how long they have served in the House. For example, an MP who stays in office for one term (say 5 years) and then leaves office will currently receive tax-free severance pay of 50% of his current salary, or £32,383 at current rates – equivalent to an annual salary increment of over £12,000 at current tax rates and pay scales.
In waging the war on poverty, congressional opposition was too strong to pass an income maintenance law. So LBJ took advantage of the biggest automatic cash machine around: Social Security. He proposed, and Congress enacted, whopping increases in the minimum benefits that lifted some two million Americans 65 and older above the poverty line. In 1996, thanks to those increased minimum benefits, Social Security lifted 12 million senior citizens above the poverty line ... No Great Society undertaking has been subjected to more withering conservative attacks than the Office of Economic Opportunity. Yet, the War on Poverty was founded on the most conservative principle: Put the power in the local community, not in Washington; give people at the grassroots the ability to stand tall on their own two feet. Conservative claims that the OEO poverty programs were nothing but a waste of money are preposterous ... Eleven of the 12 programs that OEO launched in the mid-'60s are alive, well and funded at an annual rate exceeding $10 billion; apparently legislators believe they're still working.
President Johnson's "War on Poverty" speech was delivered at a time of recovery (the poverty level had fallen from 22.4% in 1959 to 19% in 1964 when the War on Poverty was announced) and it was viewed by critics as an effort to get the United States Congress to authorize social welfare programs.
Today, this system is more or less intact. All citizens and legal foreign residents of France are covered by one of these mandatory programs, which continue to be funded by worker participation. However, since 1945, a number of major changes have been introduced. Firstly, the different health care funds (there are five: General, Independent, Agricultural, Student, Public Servants) now all reimburse at the same rate. Secondly, since 2000, the government now provides health care to those who are not covered by a mandatory regime (those who have never worked and who are not students, meaning the very rich or the very poor). This regime, unlike the worker-financed ones, is financed via general taxation and reimburses at a higher rate than the profession-based system for those who cannot afford to make up the difference. Finally, to counter the rise in health care costs, the government has installed two plans, (in 2004 and 2006), which require insured people to declare a referring doctor in order to be fully reimbursed for specialist visits, and which installed a mandatory co-pay of €1 for a doctor visit, €0.50 for each box of medicine prescribed, and a fee of €16–18 per day for hospital stays and for expensive procedures.
Wages for pharmacists in Australia appear to have stagnated. The award wages for a pharmacist is $812 a week. Pharmacist graduates are the lowest paid university graduates most years. Most pharmacists do earn above the award wage; the average male pharmacist earns $65,000, a female pharmacist averages $56,500. Over recent years, wages have stagnated, and even gone backwards. There are more graduates expected in the next few years making it even harder to get a job. Job security and increase in wages with regards to CPI could be unlikely. This is due to the large numbers of pharmacy graduates in recent years, and government desire to lower PBS costs. Contract and casual work is becoming more common. A contract pharmacist is self-employed and often called a locum; these pharmacists may be hired for one shift or for a longer period of time. There are accounts of underemployment and unemployment emerging recently.
Special taxation laws also affect the special economic zones in North Korea (in particular the Kaesong Industrial Complex) where foreign companies are allowed to operate. There is therefore corporate tax in North Korea, as outlined by the Processing Trade Law, Lock Gate Law and Copyright Law, and related legislation, including laws on tax evasion. An estimate of this corporate tax in early 2000s was for 10-14%. North Korean workers there are subject to the usual indirect taxation: their wages are paid in hard currencies by foreign companies to North Korean government, which then pays the workers in North Korean currency, minus the value of "insurance taxes and socio-cultural fees". A 2013 estimate for the tax on individual workers suggested that the state takes 45% of their wages in a form of a tax.
Out of the total paid employees in Nepal, only 26 percent are women. Only 8.3 percent of women in the labor force are paid. Women disproportionally represent low skill occupations such as craft work and service work because of their high levels of illiteracy and few years of schooling. Families' gender stereotypes and cultural norms also shaped women's participation in labor markets. Men overrepresent employment in occupations that demand more education after primary school, such as technicians and engineers. Women represent around 12 percent of the population engage in migrant labor to places like the Gulf and Malaysia. Their limited mobility to work abroad is a product of historic and patriarchal ideas that women should remain in the household. The wage gap in Nepal is stark: women earn 60 percent of what men earn in formal economic sectors.
Because each state is represented by two senators, regardless of population, each Senate class collectively represents a different number of people than each other Senate class. Since the early 19th century, class 2 senators have cumulatively represented between 50-60% of the population of the United States, while senators from each of the other two classes have cumulatively represented approximately 70-75% of the population of the United States. (Because each state has two senators, the sum total of these figures is 200%, not 100%.) Several currently large states, including California, New York, Florida, and Ohio, all have their senators in classes 1 and 3, helping to create this imbalance.
The Congressional Act of 1798 was signed into law by President John Adams. It created a tax of 20 cents each month to be withheld from seamen's wages for support of marine hospitals. The money was paid to the U.S. Collector of Customs. This was the first example of pre-paid health insurance in U.S. history. The Act was expanded in 1799 to include all "officers, seamen and marines of the navy of the United States"
The first move towards a national health insurance system was launched in Germany in 1883, with the Sickness Insurance Law. Industrial employers were mandated to provide injury and illness insurance for their low-wage workers, and the system was funded and administered by employees and employers through "sick funds", which were drawn from deductions in workers' wages and from employers' contributions. Other countries soon began to follow suit. In the United Kingdom, the National Insurance Act 1911 provided coverage for primary care (but not specialist or hospital care) for wage earners, covering about one third of the population. The Russian Empire established a similar system in 1912, and other industrialized countries began following suit. By the 1930s, similar systems existed in virtually all of Western and Central Europe. Japan introduced an employee health insurance law in 1927, expanding further upon it in 1935 and 1940. Following the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Soviet Union established a fully public and centralized health care system in 1920. However, it was not a truly universal system at that point, as rural residents were not covered.
Results conducted in 2008 supposedly show that people are not surprised about this differencealthough a large percentage of the population is black or has black ancestry, they represented no more than 8% of the 513 chosen representatives in the last election year. The salary of Whites in Brazil are, on average, 46% over the salary of Blacks. This difference might be explained by differences in education.
The Equal Pay Act of 1963 is a United States labor law amending the Fair Labor Standards Act, aimed at abolishing wage disparity based on sex (see Gender pay gap). It was signed into law on June 10, 1963, by John F. Kennedy as part of his New Frontier Program. In passing the bill, Congress stated that sex discrimination:The law provides (in part) that:
Since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, all employing entities and labor unions have a duty to treat employees equally, without discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." There are separate rules for sex discrimination in pay under the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Additional groups with "protected status" were added by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. There is no federal law banning all sexual orientation or identity discrimination, but 22 states had passed laws by 2016. These equality laws generally prevent discrimination in hiring, terms of employment, and make discharge because of a protected characteristic unlawful. There is no federal law against unjust discharge, and most states also have no law with full protection against wrongful termination of employment. Collective agreements made by labor unions and some individual contracts require people are only discharged for a "just cause". The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 requires employing entities give 60 days notice if more than 50 or one third of the workforce may lose their jobs. Federal law has aimed to reach full employment through monetary policy and spending on infrastructure. Trade policy has attempted to put labor rights in international agreements, to ensure open markets in a global economy do not undermine fair and full employment.
The U.S. Government classifies Puerto Rico as an independent taxation authority by Federal Law codified on the Title 48 of the United States Code as . Puerto Rico residents are required to pay U.S. federal taxes, import/export taxes, federal commodity taxes, social security taxes etc. Individuals working with the Federal Government pay federal income taxes while the rest of the residents are required to pay federal payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare), as well as Commonwealth of Puerto Rico income taxes. All federal employees, plus those who do business with the federal government, in addition to Puerto Rico-based corporations that intend to send funds to the U.S., and some others also pay federal income taxes. In 2009, Puerto Rico paid into the US Treasury. That was more than paid by the state of Vermont, and about the same as paid by the states of Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota. It was also over six times more than all U.S. Armed Service members overseas and all other U.S. territories combined.
Since the US Declaration of Independence in 1776 proclaimed that "all men are created equal", the Constitution was progressively amended, and legislation was written, to spread equal rights to all people. While the right to vote was needed for true political participation, the "right to work" and "free choice of employment" came to be seen as necessary for "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness". After state laws experimented, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Executive Order 8802 in 1941 set up the Fair Employment Practice Committee to ban discrimination by "race, creed, color or national origin" in the defense industry. The first comprehensive statutes were the Equal Pay Act of 1963, to limit discrimination by employers between men and women, and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, to stop discrimination based on "race, color, religion, sex, or national origin." In the following years, more "protected characteristics" were added by state and federal acts. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 protects people over age 40. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 requires "reasonable accommodation" to include people with disabilities in the workforce. Twenty two state Acts protect people based on sexual orientation in public and private employment, but proposed federal laws have been blocked by Republican opposition. There can be no detriment to union members, or people who have served in the military. In principle, states may require rights and remedies for employees that go beyond the federal minimum. Federal law has multiple exceptions, but generally requires no disparate treatment by employing entities, no disparate impact of formally neutral measures, and enables employers to voluntarily take affirmative action favoring under-represented people in their workforce. The law has not, however, succeeded in eliminating the disparities in income by race, health, age or socio-economic background.
The service sector in Canada is vast and multifaceted, employing about three quarters of Canadians and accounting for 70% of GDP. The largest employer is the retail sector, employing almost 12% of Canadians. The retail industry is concentrated mainly in a small number of chain stores clustered together in shopping malls. In recent years, there has been an increase in the number of big-box stores, such as Wal-Mart (of the United States), Real Canadian Superstore, and Best Buy (of the United States). This has led to fewer workers in this sector and a migration of retail jobs to the suburbs.
The second largest portion of the service sector is the business service and hire only a slightly smaller percentage of the population. This includes the financial services, real estate, and communications industries. This portion of the economy has been rapidly growing in recent years. It is largely concentrated in the major urban centres, especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver (see Banking in Canada).
When an employee works for several different companies during a tax year, his or her Social Security deductions could exceed the cap, because each employer may not know how much the employee has already paid in Social Security tax in other jobs. The Social Security tax coverage will be calculated on his or her personal return, and any excess is applied towards his or her Federal taxes. For example, in 2017 an employee works two jobs (either concurrently or consecutively) paying $70,000 each. Since each employer calculates the social security taxes independently, each employer will withhold 6.2% of the $70,000 employee’s salary, or $4,340, for a grand total of $8,680 -- which exceeds the cap of $7,886.40 by $739.60. The over-payment would be entered on the applicable line of Form 1040 and, assuming the employee did not owe any other Federal taxes, would be refunded to the employee. The employers who each paid $4,340 will not get a refund, since they are not aware that the employee overpaid in aggregate for the year. The government keeps the $818.40 overage. Even if the employers become aware of the overpayment, there is no method to claim the overpayment.
To calculate the total benefits a retiree is eligible for, the average indexed monthly salary (AIME) is then divided into three separate salary brackets—each multiplied by a different benefit percentage. The benefits receivable (the so-called Primary Insurance Amount, PIA) are the sum of the salary in each bracket times the benefit percentages that apply to each bracket. The benefit percentages are set by Congress and so can easily change in the future. The "bendpoints", where the brackets change, are adjusted for inflation each year by Social Security. For example, in 2013 the first bracket runs from $1 to $791/month and is multiplied by the benefit percentage of 90%, the second salary bracket extends from $791 to $4,781/month is multiplied by 32%, the third salary bracket of more than $4,781/month is multiplied by 15%. Any higher incomes than the ceiling income are not FICA covered and are not considered in the benefits calculation or in determining the average indexed monthly salary, AIME. At full retirement age the projected retirement income amount (PIA) is the sum of these three brackets of income multiplied by the appropriate benefit percentages—90%, 32% and 15%. Unlike income tax brackets, the Social Security benefits are heavily biased towards lower salaried workers. Social Security has always been primarily a retirement, disability and spousal insurance policy for low wage workers and a very poor retirement plan for higher salaried workers who hopefully have a supplemental retirement plan unless they want to live on significantly less after retirement than they used to earn.
Social Security tax is withheld from wages at a flat rate of 6.2% (4.2% for 2011 and 2012). Wages paid above a fixed amount each year by any one employee are not subject to Social Security tax. For 2015, this wage maximum is $118,500. Medicare tax of 1.45% is withheld from wages, with no maximum. Employers are required to pay an additional equal amount of Medicare taxes, and a 6.2% rate of Social Security taxes.
Federal social insurance taxes are imposed equally on employers and employees, consisting of a tax of 6.2% of wages up to an annual wage maximum ($118,500 in 2015) for Social Security plus a tax of 1.45% of total wages for Medicare. For 2011, the employee's contribution was reduced to 4.2%, while the employer's portion remained at 6.2%. To the extent an employee's portion of the 6.2% tax exceeds the maximum by reason of multiple employers (each of whom will collect up to the annual wage maximum), the employee is entitled to a refundable tax credit upon filing an income tax return for the year.
Employers are subject to unemployment taxes by the federal and all state governments. The tax is a percentage of taxable wages with a cap. The tax rate and cap vary by jurisdiction and by employer's industry and experience rating. For 2009, the typical maximum tax per employee was under $1,000. Some states also impose unemployment, disability insurance, or similar taxes on employees.