How much tax do I have to pay in Redmond, Washington form my Microsoft Research Internship income?
"An unmarried person with a total U.S.-sourced earned income under $ 37,000 during the year 2016 is likely to owe: If the original poster is not an ""independent contractor"", and is not ""billing corp-to-corp"" then: In summary: References:"
I think traffic and public transit is still a government problem. It's just that Microsoft decided to offer perks to their employees. Just because I start a carpool with some other parents doesn't mean I'm suddenly responsible for fixing the transmission on the school bus. "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-seattle-minimum-wage-20170626-story.html) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; The new study has found that jobs and work hours fell for Seattle&amp;#039;s lowest paid employees after the city raised the minimum wage to $13 last year.  &gt; Some economists see it as a possible sign that $15 minimum wage laws such as those passed in Seattle, New York and several California cities could hurt workers at the lowest end of the wage spectrum.  &gt; In Seattle restaurants the number of jobs and hours worked overall did not change much after the minimum wage rose to $13 an hour, a University of Washington study found.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6jvbvn/minimum_wage_hike_in_seattle_confirming/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~154110 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **wage**^#1 **Seattle**^#2 **work**^#3 **job**^#4 **minimum**^#5" Yeah, totally. The worst thing about being a programmer is the endless skills treadmill. (Especially if you're involved in anything Microsoftian) There's just constant API and framework churn, usually for very minor if not nonexistent benefits. But the job market harshly judges anyone who doesn't keep hopping onto the latest trend and building up critical 'years of experience' in the latest language or API.  Microsoft is also a notoriously unpleasant place to work among the top-tier software companies, thanks to intense politics and their godawful stack ranking system that guarantees good employees will get bad reviews. Didn't a recent UW study show exactly the opposite? And another from UC Berkeley found the unemployment rate was lower because of the law?  I mean, the seattle area has a 3.3% unemployment rate and restaurants employment, which was supposed to be hardest hit, is up. I am a very light TurboTax user and have expensed a laptop in the past (since it was used exclusively for work) and used the itemized deduction there and has no issues.  Just not sure if there was a limit or anything of note to realize ahead of time.  Thanks! According to Intuit, you cannot claim the $50 charitable contribution, so the entire $2000 / month will be taxable instead of $1900. That's only an extra $35 if your combined tax rate is 35%. As TTT mentioned, do this for the experience, not for the money. My wife and I have been hosting international students for 10 years now. https://ttlc.intuit.com/questions/3152069-i-received-a-1099-misc-employee-compensation-for-hosting-a-foreign-exchange-student-can-i-complete-a-schedule-c-for-the-expenses It's a tax shelter. Foreign affiliates hold most of Microsoft's cash and investments. The cost of borrowing is much cheaper than repatriating the money and paying taxes. Those bonds are selling at rates similar to US Treasury Debt. Also, many people and organizations with lots of assets still borrow money for day to day expenses. Why? You tend to make a better return on investments which are committed for a number of years, and the timing of income from those investments may not coincide with your expenses. The tax cost at election should be zero.  The appreciation is all capital gain beyond your basis, which will be the value at election. IRC §83 applies to property received as compensation for services, where the property is still subject to a substantial risk of forfeiture.  It will catch unvested equity given to employees. §83(a) stops taxation until the substantial risk of forfeiture abates (i.e. no tax until stock vests) since the item is revocable and not yet truly income.  §83(b) allows the taxpayer to make a quick election (up to 30 days after transfer - firm deadline!) to waive the substantial risk of forfeiture (e.g. treat shares as vested today). The normal operation of §83 takes over after election and the taxable income is generally the value of the vested property minus the price paid for it.  If you paid fair market value today, then the difference is zero and your income from the shares is zero. The shares are now yours for tax purposes, though not for legal purposes.  That means they are most likely a capital asset in your hands, like other stocks you own or trade.  The shares will not be treated as compensation income on vesting, and vesting is not a tax matter for elected shares. If you sell them, you get capital gain (with tax dependent on your holding period) over a basis equal to FMV at the election.  The appreciation past election-FMV will be capital gain, rather than ordinary income.  This is why the §83(b) election is so valuable.  It does not matter at this point whether you bought the restricted shares at FMV or at discount (or received them free) - that only affects the taxes upon §83(b) election. They likely have an intern (job title) pay-scale that maxes out somewhere below $30/hr in order to meet the FLSA (that exempt vs non-exempt stuff you were seeing). As a PhD student, you could probably negotiate up into the ~$25/hr range, but from a benefits standpoint, they might not be able to pay you $35/hr without making you an exempt, full-time employee. I don't want to be needlessly critical, but I think that you're being downvoted because of how unwieldy that source is. The writer struggles to communicate ideas and concepts clearly - his structures are needlessly verbose, to the extent that arriving at his conclusion in even a single sentence is like slogging through a certain legendary molasses flood.  I've dealt with technical language before (graduate economics-type stuff), and there are definitively good and bad ways of addressing dry, technical materials. If your material isn't interesting, then it should at least be clear. That blog post is neither (which is moderately surprising [or maybe it isn't?] considering his seniority at Microsoft). I graduated with a Computer Engineering degree in the mid 2000's, my first job out of school paid $70k. Every job I took after that increased my income 10-15%, and I jumped around *a lot*.   Anyway, the $250k jobs aren't really a SF thing, you can find them all over if you have enough experience (at least 10 years under your belt). I see $150-175k jobs all the time here in Dallas, if you factor in a generous 401k and other benefits you can get pretty darn close to $250k, and the cost of living here is pretty cheap.   I totally agree that the degree isn't all that important once you get started, that's why I encourage people to put effort into cultivating a professional network. Maintain your linkedin profile, and never stay with the same employer for more than 2 years. Jumping ship will give you new skills and greatly expand your professional network. It's not  particularly difficult unless you're an introvert (which lots of tech type folks are), but that just means you'll have to work a little harder at it. "If you are talking about a home office, you don't ""charge"" the business anything. If the area is used exclusively as an office you pro-rate by square footage just the actual expenses.  TurboTax recent published an article ""Can I Take the Home Office Deduction?"" which is a must read if you don't understand the process. (Note: I authored said article.)" In Canada, internships aren't as popular. We have co-op work terms during alternating semesters. When I was a coop student, I got about $15-20 per hour, and that was 2005-2007. Coop students at my current job make about $20-30 depending on their degree and year.   That aside, I had a bad sales experience in one of my work terms. Basically exactly the same, cold calls all day, and if I got a lead, I would go to their office and present the plan. I hated it. I slugged it out, got a mediocre review, but my next work term I did really well and thus began my slightly different career in supply chain mgmt.   I still miss finance, and i build family members and friends their investment portfolios. One day I'll start my own consulting business, maybe do it on the side. that's just not possible. 27% of all US scientists are immigrants and so are 48% of all engineers.  America does not produce enough high educated/skilled workers.   MS build, or planned on building, a research facility around 5 years ago. They said they can't get enough professors and doctors with adequate education to fill the 9,000 positions. so they asked the INS how to proceed. the INS told them to fill H1b visa applications. that is only once a year and they might get, statistically, only 2000-3000 out of it of they're lucky because most will be rejected or just not get picked (it's a lottery).   MS asked Canada, Canada said do whatever, more taxes for us. MS built it in Ontario I think.  at the same time Google wrote that angry blog post in their corporate blog about how shitty the H1b situation is. One study. With flaws like this:  &gt; In particular, to avoid confusing establishments that were subject to the minimum with those that were not, the authors did not include large employers with locations both inside and outside of Seattle in their calculations.  And also [this, from the Seattle Times](http://www.seattletimes.com/business/uw-study-finds-seattles-minimum-wage-is-costing-jobs/)  &gt;In its report, the UW researchers focused on “low wage” jobs — those paying under $19 an hour — and not just “minimum wage” jobs, to account for the spillover effect of employers raising the pay of those making more than minimum wage.   &gt;To try to isolate the effects of the minimum-wage law from other factors, the UW team built a “synthetic” Seattle statistical model, aggregating areas outside King County but within the state that had previously shown numbers and trends similar to Seattle’s labor market.  &gt;Other studies on minimum wage have typically used lower-wage industries, such as the restaurant sector, or lower-paid groups such as teenagers, as proxies to get at employment, they said.  &gt;That was the case with a University of California, Berkeley study released last week that found Seattle’s minimum-wage law led to higher pay for restaurant workers without costing jobs in 2015 and 2016.  If you support Trump's policies, then you should be in favor of raising the minimum wage. Isn't that the whole purpose of reducing the labor supply from immigrants? There was an article recently about the affect that the reduced supply of immigrants was having on the summer labor supply in Cape Cod. They will have to raise wages to get more people.  From The Atlantic: [How the Democrats Lost Their Way on Immigration](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/07/the-democrats-immigration-mistake/528678/)