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To: TH who wrote (25046)	11/5/2004 8:57:54 AM
From: GraceZ	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 306849

Social Security is now split off to Medicare/SS. For self-employed, the Medicare portion is 2.9 and the SS portion is 12.5 (maybe 12.4 I forget exactly). When you say it's 6% for employed, you are only counting the SS you see taken out ( your Medicare half is another 1.4 or so, half of 2.9), the employer matches exactly what you see deducted, which means half of what you pay is after tax and half is pre-tax. Since 1/2 self-employment tax is now deductible self employed individuals pay almost exactly what employees pay, only they are made a little more painfully aware of what the real total is since they write the full check. I think if more employed people were aware that SS/Medicare payments were over 15% of their total compensation they'd be a little more anxious to limit it's scope. When SS was first established the contribution was around 1.5%.