I incorporated but only after making over 50K year
Posted By: My take on it on 2006-07-09
In Reply to: No More Independent Contractors - babe
IC's risk being considered an employee if they work only for one company. I had a friend with an MTSO that the IRS went after because some of her MT's worked only for her.
Incorporation was a benefit to me because my business was making money, yet I was paying self-employment taxes on what my business was making. For example, if I have 3 IC's working for me, who bring in $40,000 per year, that is what my BUSINESS is earning, not me and therefore I should not be paying self-employment taxes on my business earnings. So I incorporated, paid myself a small salary for running the business on which I DO pay self-employment tax, and took the rest of the earnings as an S corp. They go right through to my personal taxes but I save the 15% SS tax, which as you can see on 40K, saves me $6 grand per year right there. Also enjoy 401K contributions from my corp, and increased deduction for health insurance.
would not recommend incorporating if making less than 50K per year with a business as there are increased fees and corp taxes too.
Regarding the prior post who said "For insurance, for professional liability insurance, I was told that you have to be incorporated. I don't have a problem with this. If I hired someone to build an addition for me, I would want him/her to have insurance. Why should medical records be any different?"
Medical records are different because the MT carries essentially zero liability. Insurance insures against lawsuits. MT's lawsuits are nearly nonexistent. Many, many, MANY MT's do not carry professional liability insurance. The analogy of a construction company putting on an addition is not equivalent to the MT situation. It would be like asking if your neighbor carries liability insurance against your contractor. Why would your neighbor carry insurance on your contractor if they have no liability? Exactly.
Complete Discussion Below:  marks the location of current message within thread
The messages you are viewing
are archived/old.
To view latest messages and participate in discussions, select
the boards given in left menu
Other related messages found in our database
Yea, but she's probably making $50K more a year than you are because she knows what she's doin
:)
I know someone making 60 grand a year with no CMT
Means nothing. Nowadays, it's pure luck and nothing more.
Is your hubby making that much a year? sm..
Is he telling you to earn that much or is he being funny? Just my situation, but my hubby would never tell me how much money I had to make or whether I should work part time or full time. Life is too short to work 7 days a week or 12+ hours daily for the almighty dollar!
Me 2, 15-20 years ago I was making about $70,000 a year
Now it seems, I'm just scraping by, juggling the utility bills and paying whichever one has sent me the 24-hour disconnect notice this month; it's become a grim miserable job compared to what it was. I'm nearing retirement age, but I doubt retirement is going to be in my future for a very long time.
The single worst thing that ever happened to us was going from the gross line count to the character count, and not adjusting the line rate upward to parity -- not to mention the adjustments that should have been made to accommodate all the extra time spent struggling to make sense of huge increase in ESL dictations that has occurred over the last 15 years, and of course there should have been COLAs as well, which we all know has not happened.
In the 1980s, with the advent of powerful and affordable PCs, free lance transcription became much more common. So if you were experienced, disciplined and organized, you could be much better off economically by working for yourself -- although there were definitely advantages to working in-hospital. There were great benefits and the salary was indeed enough to support a small family (albeit very modestly.)
For a number of years during that time, many of us worked part time in the hospital for benefits, but made our real money at home.
But in my case, the time came when it just made no economic sense to work in-housel, I was better buying off buying private insurance for major medical care, tax-deferred annuities, and self-insuring the little stuff.
I would just pick up tapes from the hospital every morning, and drop off the work (which I printed out) from the day before.
I usually had 24 hours to transcribe tapes which I did during school hours, when things were peaceful and quiet.
I transcribed a couple thousand GROSS lines day. Every single character line counted, so by taking advantage of headers/footers, creative macros, word expansions, etc., I really boosted my productivity far beyond to what I could do in-house on the self-correcting Selectric, Wang or Mag Card, or whatever 10-years behind technology was currently being used, plus all the office distractions and politics, and I definitely did not to have to work 24/7 to earn a good living. (Oh how I loved WP5.1!)
In fact, 2000 gross lines a day, 5 days a week at 10 cents a line (courier 10-pitch font, one-inch margins) was very very do-able for an experienced productive acute-care MT, provided she had good equipment, good reference books, and stayed focused. It would take about 5-6 hours a day to get that amount of work done. So figure the math out for yourselves, that's just a tad under $50,000 a year, certainly not a high standard of living in those days but adequate when it meant you could stay home and be actually be a full time parent when your children were home from school, and very comfortable, if you were married with a working spouse, or had rerliable child support, or social security for your children (if you were widowed.)
If you chose to work some weekends and evenings, it was not that all that difficult to hit that $75,000 a year mark, which I did for a couple of years so I was able to pay the tuition at a good boarding school -- and cruelly thwarted my teen-aged son's only ambition in life, which was to become a high school drop-out.
Things have gotten bad, no doubt about that, and the worst part of it is, is that most of the big MTSOs are still charging the hospitals as much as we used to earn, and sometimes even more, but the MT is no longer earning it, and often can't get enough work to meet the line counts required by the MTSOs for benefits (although the cost of those benefits are reflected in the cost charged to the hospital.)
I don't know what the answer is, as the electronic immigrant is such a huge threat.
It's pretty darn awful, and I feel very very bad for those of you starting out in this field, and I do hope things change for you (and that someday soon I can retire.)
And the point that the person made is that that she was worth $75,000 a year, not necessarily that she was getting it or could get it, and I absolutely agree with her. This is a hard tough job if it's done right -- it's mentally tiring, it's hard on your back, your hands, your neck (and your behind.)
It requires a lot of time -- it requires focus, you must stay alert, and must give 100% of your attention to what you are doing 100% of the time, it takes education and brains -- and now a word of truth which my 35+ years experience gives me the right to say aloud -- it's not fulfilling, wonderful, lovable and enjoyable, it's often as repetitious and tedious as an assembly line but infinitely more frustrating.
PS: I recall one of my colleagues from those early years of my career, now gone from this earth, telling me that the 1960s were really the "fat" years, that things actually began to decline salary-wise, in real dollars, in the 1970s.
If U R making 40-45K/year for working half-days,
Something doesn't add up.
Tax guy told me to hold 30%. After first year when got idea what I would be making, he told me
:P
are you incorporated?
If you are incorporated, the corporate veil should be enough to shield YOUR assets. Is the idea to protect yourself or what is the insurance supposed to be protecting? That's the idea of insurance, to protect assets, so I guess I would have to ask "them" what is supposed to be protected. I just generally told clients that MT work carries such little liability that very very few MTSO carry insurance. We always just lined it out of contracts and signed off on it.
Are you incorporated? How did you come up with a name? sm
I was advised by an attorney I hired, for something not related to MT, to incorporate. It may not matter, or perhaps it will, I don't know what name to give my "company." Any ideas? I'm currently very happily subcontracted with an MTSO and have no plans of making any changes but never say never... Thanks for your ideas.
becoming incorporated
I wonder if anybody knows if you have someone else working for you, do you have to become incorporated and open up a commercial bank account and to file a 1099. I am really dumb, I have never done this before, but I have so much work and I am considering hiring someone perhaps in my church. Can someone put some light on this, please. I appreciate it.
You don't have to be incorporated.
I would suggest that you consider going the route of using a subcontractor rather than IC. You become responsible for many things when you're an employer and if you can avoid it, you should. You will be pay 1/2 the employee's SS tax, and will be responsible for withholding and submitting Federal, state and local taxes, among other things like Unemployment (some states mandate it).
Subcontractors are responsible for their own taxes; you simply send them a 1099 for earnings over $600. You can use your own SS# as well.
I would advise going the subcontractor route if there is any chance that the workload may fluctuate or dry up since you may be faced with a decision about lay-off as well.
Incorporated
I have been incorporated for years. I worked independent for years as well and got a new accountant and was told by incorporating I would save a lot in self-employment taxes and she is right. Every year I save at least a couple of thousand dollars in self-employment taxes.
Has anybody here incorporated?
I never did. In Missouri if you use your own name you do not have to register with the state. If you use a fictitious name, you must be resistered. The last few years I have not made enough money for me to warrant the expense I don't think. I will be interested in following this link though.
Has anybody here incorporated? sm
I'm told it would give me a tax break. I'm currently working as an IC. Is this expensive to do? Do you need a business name to do this? Can this be done online?
Any info would be greatly appreciated.
Are any IC Incorporated since they are self-employed?
Just wondering if any IC out there have set themselves up as a Corporation. Being tax illiterate, it seems like I do not have many deductions when it comes time to file. My DH is looking into opening a business to provide a service and someone with a similar service suggested to him to file for corporation to be able to receive more tax benefits and deductions. My CPA over the last 10 years has never suggested it to me even though I ask him what I could I do for more deductions. Is this possible?
Mumblers incorporated!
Do you sometimes get the impression that the docs think that one and only one person is transcribing their notes and that person is completely familiar iwth the mumbles?
i have given up to leaving blanks. Maybe it's the only way they'll learn but I'm not guessing at what they're saying. They all should be taught that the transcription is only as good as the dictation.
Generally don't complain but EVERY doc I've had so far has had a severe case of the mumbles!
There are keyboards that have a touch pad incorporated
in them. I think I've seen them with a tracker ball too.
Oracle Transcription Incorporated, Rockville, MD
x
sure i was. i'm making fun of the people who are making a case for background checks, etc
to do medical transcription at home as if they may do something AWFUL with the info they receive. So if you want an invasion of privacy let's REALLY invade it and make sure fat chicks don't transcribe because they are so busy eating they can't get the work done, they mess up the keyboard with food and if they are provided health insurance they will raise the rates for the company sky high because their health risks are higher than others. Then there are the psychological issues overweight people bring to the table. After we eliminate fat people, we can go on to eliminate diabetic people who may have low blood sugar while typing and go into a spell and type the wrong thing. I could go on and on through the process of elimination. How about prescribed medications that may cloud your thinking? So you take Ambien to sleep but you have an Ambien groggy hangover when you are transcribing? Should they transcribe. How about your teens are on your last nerves and you take a Xanax? Should you be allowed to transcribe?
You realize by doing that they're making more money & you're making less? You should reconsid
Mine are in year-round thank goodness! They've started their new year 2 months ago.
x
Union diesil mechanic - good pay, great benefits. We swap year to year on who brings home more sm
money.....but I am an IC and he has all the benefits...health insurance/dental that the company pays for, pension plan, 401k, etc. Factor all of that in and he makes way more than I do.
to cowgirl - Last I knew, last year the job paid $25,000/year no taxes, etc.
The hospital was bombed about a year ago, but not a lot of damage, very minimal damage.
44-year-old WF, M, Texas, 3 grown kids, just had 26 year wedding anv.
nm
nope, still crunching last few days of year to hit my 50k this year. how can you when you haven'
;
Nothing this year. We ALWAYS got a cool surprise in the past, but this year nothing. :-( nm
d
After I went to a 1-year MT course at a vocational school, it was so bad that I did the 2-year colle
Not only did I finally receive the proper training, but the woman on the advisory board hired and mentored me. I also joined the local AAMT and networked. Good luck. I know how frustrating it can be. A community college will have a good program to include medical language, MT courses taught by local MTSOs, business English, anatomy and physiology, pathophysiology, etc.
I think he makes $700,000.00 a year, and if they ask him to walk before his first year MQ has...sm
to pay him a cool 1 million dollars. You can check this out at the Medquist website. I think the CFO makes $350,000 a year, and the head of IT makes $250.000 a year.
P.S. This does not include the perks, like expense account, car allowance, sign-on bonus, etc.
Our 16 year old son has been working for a year now to pay for his truck.
He's learning how to sand and do body work and how the engine and transmission go together. My parents didn't buy cars for my siblings and I either. I had a 20+ year old beater car until I could afford to move up to a a newer one.
I see all the nice new cars parked in the high school parking lot every day. It's nice that so many disrespectful punk kids get handed something nicer to drive than what all the teachers drive. Oh, well. Honestly, I think most of them borrow Mommy or Daddy's car or are the child of a doctor who can afford to hand them everything.
Hopefully, my kids will take better care of their cars because they bought and built them on their own. You're not going to grow up to be responsible if you don't work hard for something and expect Mommy and Daddy to bail you out all the time.
Oh, my Dad lectured us on even allowing our child to have a vehicle because Dad didn't have one until after he had worked his way through college, lettered on the football team, got straight As, lettered on the baseball team, yadda yadda. He either walked or hitched a ride. Yeah, well, times were different back then, Daddy-O. LOL At least my kid has the opportunity to work and earn his own car.
IC - 30 hours week, $98K last year. So far this year - 28K. sm
Individual IC - own account(s).
Not me, owed last year, and expect to owe this year- sm
or break even, had more expenses this year. Only owed $200 but still don't want to owe at all. Need to start doing estimated tax payments again so I don't owe! Guess I will get off my butt and do that this year.
come on.. you cannot compare a 2-year-old and a 15-year-old
x
46/F I have a 9-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy.
.
Got $$$$ back last year but this year
I have to pay them, sold a property I never lived in but I had enough sense to set aside $45,000 so just waiting on them to send me my WT2s so I can get started.
making up.....
I suggest you have your father read my post and explain it to you. Apparently you have poor comprehension skills. Talk about ignorance.
My point was NEW immigrants who come here not to become American. Obviously, this is not apply to all NEW immigrants, because as we know, many of them bust their butts to become American in every way including service in the military. My point was that so many of the NEW immigrants, meaning those from the last 25-30 years, come with different aspirations than previous groups. This is documented by social scientists who have been studying this very point for a couple of decades. Look up some articles in any journal of American sociology or political science and you will find research on this subject.
I am perfectly aware of New Spain and New France and even that Russia once owned parts what is now Washington state and Oregon. Do the people in Northwest US demand to have legal papers printed in Russian because 400 years ago, Russia settled that land? Are you aware of the language controversy in Quebec, Canada? We don't need that in this country and having English as our accepted common language has helped prevent some of the fighting and death that results from people coming to blows over language. Language is the root of "the Troubles" as the Irish call their 100 years of conflict with England. England passed a law making English the official language and forbad Gaelic in public places, including schools. Look how that has worked for them. In the U.S., it has worked because it has been understood as a custom and new immigrants were proud to learn English, because it was a mark of American citizenship.
You need a history lesson - New Spain was SOLD to the U.S. government and New France was sold to the U.S. government by their respective kings because France and Spain needed money to finance their wars with each other. So, Spain left voluntarily.
BTW, my brother wrote my parents in English during WWII and his letters were confiscated - is there a group that will protest such actions again Irish-German Americans?
Wnat to see what ignorace looks like? Got a mirror?
I am making......
17.00 per hour with a home-based hospital job (you have to be local to the hospita) PLUS a generous incentive with a "quite easy to attain" minimum line count and then 8 cents a line after the minimum is met. Plus I have all the benefits of being an employee (which I am) including paid vacation and benefits. I've been the national route and I didn't find any of them to be paying well, plus I was always running out of work. We are swamped all the time and NEVER run out at the hospital. If we do run out, which has never happened, we can go into the department and shred paper or something. I wish more hospitals would go back to having a department. That's where you'll find your dignity IMHO.
You were making LESS than THIS????
unless u r making $25/hr
not impressed one bit
you can make $12.50 an hour being a secretary and be dumb as
dirt.
you can make $12.50 an hour doing data entry and not know one
word of medicine or the other junk we have to know and be responsible
for and get grief from QA about.
you can make $12.50 an hour doing a lot of things and not have to
put up with the junk MTs are having to put up with now.
IT is making me
My eyes keep moving up, down, up, down. I'm getting a headache. How long does it take to adjust to this?
No, making way more. nm
x
Making more now
I worked for a hospital for 5 years and then we moved... tried another national who didn't pay much, and then started with OSi and am making more than I ever have (including 25 years of secretarial work)! I've read so many negative posts here about OSi, but I think those who have complaints tend to voice them more than those who don't. I'm very happy with them as far as money, schedule, and flexibility. I know from reading previous posts that many will assume I'm part of management just trying to give them a plug. No, I'm not part of OSi management. Just a very happy transcriptionist.
Men Making More LOL
That is because they choose wisely and don't accept just anything. I am female and quite often make more than most women. Having been in the MT business for only 3-4 yrs I am constantly amazed at the rates offered and accepted, and the lack of understanding at the complexity and enormity of education required to do this job. When someone offers me a low salary I tell them what I think of it and just go on to the next company. I have always known why there aren't a lot of men in MT work - the salary. In places where typing pays decent $$$ there are tons and tons of men.
making the big $$$
I was actually referring to the above posts that state they are making $50 to $60K per year.
Making $100,000/yr?
Is that really possible without having your own service?
ya know, when I'm making
70k a year, I can have the 850 square foot bedroom if I want. In fact, my home is a mere 2200 square foot, on 5 acres in the country, only worth $450,000 but I paid off the mortgage in full in 7 years, by- yep, you guessed it-- working my MTSO. I have no debts. I own 4 cars. I have money stuffed in my 401k. The point was made in an earlier post by our beloved Patti, who chooses to live in 1000 square feet - and also put 15K in her retirement account and takes home 50K. When Patti mentioned her home was 1000 square feet, some ignorant troll said (now say this in a high falsetto) "shocked! my bedroom is 850 square feet! How can you possibly live in only 1000 square feet." Jealous, no. Anyone who wants to own, maintain, clean their 850 square foot bedroom can be my guest. Me - I go for a little smaller but still nice, with more freedom and lifestyle. That's why I put in my 5-10 hours a week running my service while you're working full time. LOL!
What we SHOULD be making, and what most of us ARE making (sm)
are two different things. We SHOULD be getting from 12-18 cents per line. In reality, most of us are somewhere between 7 and 9 cents a line.
I'm making nowhere near that much
I'm either working for the wrong companies or am really slow, my best is 200 lines an hour, which translates to at best 18 bucks an hour, Wish I was faster I guess
What I would like to know..... IF they are indeed making that much then.... sm
how are they doing it? VR? Would love to know the secret. Those of you claiming to make a ton of money, please do share how you do it. Have been doing this for 15+ years and I am seeing a quick decline in pay and seeing these companies getting away with making the lines harder to get with how they calculate them. This profession quickly going downhill.
More than what she is making, I'm sure.
x
If you are making 9.5....
I would ask for at least 11. If you have been there that long, why not? I always ask for more than i really want cause you can negotiate. If you end up with 10.5 that is still a good rate.
For ESL's I want 11, but I don't get snippy if i have some here and there. I do one now exclusively and he can be a big pain but i can understand him fine and ESLs are great for making normals because in my experience they repeat A LOT.
The going rates around here seems to be 8 cpl with many companies...you are doing good at what you have but there is nothing wrong with levering your experience and services for more money. You have proven yourself already to these people. If they turn you down you can start looking elsewhere but only do so if you are taking a step up.
I was making 16/hr when i was QA n/m
x
Making changes
Alright folks let's move this off the word help board because it's become a different discussion. First of all, I personally believe that we should type what doctors say, everything they say and not change a thing. So if they say Synthroid 100 mg, leave it. If they say There was changes. Leave it. However, our companies and many hospitals don't agree.
If you were to try to get a job editing books at a publlishing house you would need a degree in English and you'd get paid a whole heck of a lot more than we do. But we do the same job, fixing the English of doctors, having perfect punctuation, correcting verb tenses. Not to mention the medical side, knowing all the drug dosages, correct lab values (yeah we get marked off for those too). I love it when I have to leave something blank like I just did "H&H 13/4/38" ???
IMHO we don't get paid enough to do all we have to do. We are not just typists. My friend is a nurse and when I told her everything we have to know she told me we could all be nurses! This is because I carried on a conversation with her about cardiac cath, CABG and people who have IV dye allergies and the compliance issues with Mucomyst. She was shocked.
We get no respect from many doctors. I actually had a PCP that I went to when I was sick say that because I was an MT I knew too much about medicine in a really condescending voice. Had another say then what do you suggest when he tried to tell me he'd done all the possible tests. Corrected another to his face.
So call me whatever you want but if I hear the doctor say something that is inappropriate in the same manner that Potassium 132 is inappropriate or Synthroid 100 mg is inappropriate, I'm going to leave a blank. Maybe the doctor is mad or frustrated but the medical record is a legal document that the patient can get access to anytime they want. So when the doctor calls a patient a land whale or says she's f-ing pregnant again or is a retard or is an SOB (and I don't mean short of breath), IMO I am covering their butt by giving them a chance to rethink what they say before they put it in a legal document.
|
