A brief aside: how appropriate would it be to either pimp yourself in this thread, or to start a thread for freelance folks looking for clients? I know there’s a general prohibition around here on using the forums to sell your own products, but by the same token I’m thinking there’s a bunch of us in service jobs who could probably get meaningful work or at least leads if some folks on the forums know about us and what we do.
I’m a lawyer in private practice, which is sorta freelance, and I do work that would be useful to anyone starting a business or raising capital for a business. There seem to be no shortage of folks doing that on these boards.
On the flipside, our firm leans heavily on technology to keep overhead low, so there’s probably some opportunities there. If anyone out there can help get favorable health insurance rates for a midsize, multistate law firm, I KNOW we can use you.
How much room is there normally on negotiating pay for contracting work? I just got done contracting at a place that paid me a day rate, and when they brought me on they told me that was the highest they were willing to offer.
I accepted it without thinking too much about it because I was dead broke (I actually went negative on my bank balance before they paid me for the first time) but now I’m in a position where despite doing my best to cut down my expenses and save what I could while working there I’m not sure I have enough to pay the taxes I need to pay on what I earned.
I know you’re supposed to pay once a quarter or whatever but how bad would it be if I didn’t pay my taxes on that income this month?
Part of the reason I’m in such a financial pickle is because my previous full time employer didn’t pay me for the last 2 and a half months I worked for them.
I believe it’s around 5%-6% interest (APR) in penalty for not paying your quarterly estimated taxes. I’m actually not sure how that calculates out since this is the final quarter but you should have until 1/15/2011 to pay it. Totally not a CPA, just going from experience from missing a quarterly payment or two in the past.
I say enjoy it! Even if you don’t get this gig, remember how good it feels to get excited about an interview and that even the worst situations can change in a heartbeat. Good luck!
Well I think/hope the phone interview went well, but I stumbled on one question I really knew nothing about (monetizing SEO traffic), but was honest about it. I’ll hear back in a day or two on any further interviews. Sigh.
Ah well, tomorrow I have an interview with an IT staffing agency called Creative Circle, so I hope that goes well. :)
Nobody knows how to monetize SEO. If they did, we’d all be rich. :) Sometimes copping to not knowing something is exactly the right thing to do, but it’s often hard to know if a perspective employer is going to buy it or not.
I’m not a CPA, but I do write the programs that calculate these things so I’m pretty familiar with how they work.
Here’s how federal underpayment of estimated taxes works:
Current rate is 4% APR (this can vary), which translates to basically be ~.011% a day.
Either take what you paid in taxes last year or take 90% of what you think you’ll have to pay this year. Divide that by 4, and then separate the year into quarters as follows - 1/1/ through 4/15, 4/16 through 6/15, 6/16 through 9/15, and 9/16 through 1/15. That’s the amount you’ll need to pay and the times when you need to get those quarterly payments paid within.
So if you think you’ll need to pay $9,000 in taxes this year to the feds, then you’ll need to pay $2,025 by mid-April, June, September, and then the January of the following year ($9,000 X .9 = $8,100, divided by 4 is $2,025). If you don’t you’ll start accruing interest of .011% per day on the amount you haven’t paid. This works out to be in the ballpark of 2% of your total tax if you blow it off completely and just pay your taxes in full come April 15th when you file.
Note that states with income tax often have harsher penalties and rates for not making estimated payments than the IRS does. It’s entirely possible to be owing your state a fraction of the tax you owe the feds and wind up paying an even larger total penalty because you didn’t make your estimated payments on time at the state level. IRS penalties are relatively tame compared to state penalties.
Oh and Brian - best of luck with things. Don’t sell yourself short.
I finally got my old gaming writing portfolio working, so I’ve spent all morning applying to paid and unpaid writing gigs. Been meaning to get back into it, and now I’ll have the time and energy. ;)
I actually have a client right now in the LA area, but they are an IT company that focuses on .Net, etc. They actually do have an opening for a QA person with strong SQL and scripting skills, but that doesn’t sound like a match at all.
If you’d like, I’d be happy to at least take a look at your resume and format it in the manner I do when I submit resumes, just to give you a different viewpoint and maybe explain why I made certain changes.
Sorry I can’t be of more help, and condolences indeed. I was unemployed for nearly a year before making the giant leap from IT to IT recruiting.
K, I think the interview with Creative Circle went very well, and they already have a job they think I’m very capable of getting, so yay! :) Thanks for all the support, folks. :)
