scubalady

Hi All,

I wondered if someone can help me. We may be moving to the USA with my husband's company (H1B visa) but first I needd to know whether we will be able to survive on just his salary over there. I know it's hard to accurately work out what we will come out with every month but I need to get a pretty good idea to see if it's worth us going. His salary is likely to be about $90,000 a year, we are married with one child. I though I read somewhere that you can't claim all the exemptions if you're a non resident alien and I need this clarifying. We will be living in Indiana. I need to know how much federal tax will be, state tax, medicare and FICA. I'm not interested in deductions yet though. Can anyone help? Especially with the non resident/resident issue. Also, I only read yesterday about the property tax, are there any other taxes I should be aware of. Also, do most large multi national companies provide health insurance and is this a taxable expense?

Thanks in advance!

NatashaB

My husband earns the same as yours (well, $92k) and we also have one child, I don't work currently and our witholdings were based on filing a joint return (his HR department gave him a form to calculate how much he should have witheld from his salary). His take home pay is $2800 per 2 weeks (that includes $174 deducted for medical and dental insurance). We are in MI so not sure how helpful that is but may give you a vague idea of what you can expect.

Usually property adverts give the property tax amounts so if you look through some real estate ads you should be able to get an idea of those.

http://www.suburbancomputer.com/tips_calculator.php may help.

Duncan Roberts

That's a hard question to accurately answer because tax is not simple. You have your gross income, then you have the deductions which turn your gross income into your taxable income, some of which will be in your paycheck, some of which are external and will have to either be figured in by yourself or just used when you file a tax return.

Just on the gross salary, figure about 25% loss due to all the taxes. After that it becomes murky and you will need to find out about other payroll options like health, dental, vision and life insurance, flexible spending accounts, dependent care accounts, short term and long term disability, 401k (retirement) plan plus any other things. Some will lower the amount of tax that will come out of your pay, some wont. Then you need to figure out things like mortgage interest, property tax and other tax deductions like charity donations, certain work related mileage, etc. Or you could just figure to pay a lot of tax for the first year, get a big tax refund and have a tax accountant figure the best tax status to claim the next year so you get more money in your paycheck.

Just remember that pretty much you decide how much tax comes out of your paycheck but there is a number at the end of the year you must have paid to each tax authority applicable (federal, state, city, etc). If you pay too much, you get a refund. If you don't pay enough, you write a check for the difference. Pretty much everything has some sort of tax, some are paid at the point of service (sales tax for instance) some are not (property tax for instance). People who complain about being over taxed in the UK are often surprised when they see the amount of different taxes and deductions that come out of their paycheck or get billed for throughout the year.

Picnic

Try plugging his salary into this website: www.paycheckcity.com.

You can choose the state where you will be living, the frequency of salary payments, how many deductions your husband will have taken from his salary (including those for medical and 401k) and the calculator will give the take home pay.

You will of course need to find out what other costs you will incur - house rental, car payment etc. to work out whether or not the remainder is workable for your family. You won't pay property taxes unless you purchase a house. Most multinationals provide health insurance and HR should be able to tell you the contribution cost, in some cases the company will cover 100% of the contributions but this isn't common (in my experience) and you will have costs over and above the monthly contribution (see the wiki for more info). Medical contributions are generally not claimable on your tax return.

Duncan Roberts

Yes they are. Generally if medical insurance contributions come out of your paycheck then they are included in the W-2 and claimed on your tax return in the form of net income. There are a lot of other situations where they and medical out of pocket expenses can be claimed on a tax return.

scubalady

Thanks everyone for your replies. I think we have better idea of the income now.