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Old 07-20-2015, 07:48 AM
petsetc petsetc is offline
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Please consider what a reasonable wage is in this area when hiring. From MIT’s Living Wage Calculator, for a family of 4, it is $24.02 in Lake County and $22.29 in Sumter County. Remember this is based on FT employment.

Since a self-employed pays both parts of employment taxes, (7.65% as employer/7.65% as employee), the living wage numbers adjust up to $26.00 in Lake County and $24.13 in Sumter County. Since they have no benefits this doesn’t consider retirement, vacations, etc.

Also, a self-employed probably only gets paid for 75 to 80 % of a normal 40 hr week since some time spent doing estimates, etc.

Don’t mean to imply you need to pay this, only that the quality of work is affected by standard of living.