Hello all,
Any information any one has is greatly appreciated. We are soooo confused.:confused:

A little linformation:

My husband got an offer to go temp to perm in tyler, tx. We currently own a house and live in houston, tx. We will be putting the house on the market so that when he goes direct in 6 months we can move there permanately. I need to explain the offer so that someone could tell us if it sounds right since we know nothing about per deim. The offer is this: the engineering company offered $43/hr and $64.50 for anything over 40 hrs. the contract company then explained all of our insurance costs and so on and so forth. The next part is where we got lost. The recruiter said that they would only be taxing $15.17 for the first 40 hrs. The taxes that we don't pay on the $27.83 would go to living expenses until we are able to move there permanantly or 12 months what ever comes first. They explained that as per diem. We understand per diem to be a daily rate paid over your wages for living expenses. In this case tyler is $99/day. So our question is that how are they able to do that? Wouldn't we eventually have to pay taxes on the $27.83? And wouldn't the IRS then look at the $27.83 as the actual per diem, which is way too much for the 99 per day! Then my husbands salary would only be $15/hr. that would be one hellova pay cut! If they claim the whole $43/hr on the w2 and just show the amount of taxes we paid then we would have underpaid taxes and owe them anyway? If they give us a 1099 then it would be even worse even if we keep all the reciepts. We are so confused!! My husband really wants this job but we don't want to sign anything if we can get the raw end of the deal! If anyone knows anything about contract employment or per diem and taxes Please let us know if you have heard of this or if this doesn't sound correct.

I hope I explained this properly!

On any per diem "salary" you are technically an "independent contractor" meaning that you are responsible for putting aside monies to pay state and federal taxes.

It sounds like a bad deal to me. Tell your husband if it doesn't feel right don't go for it.

Thank you for your response! We are concerned that maybe the info we have received is not correct. I think we may have heard it wrong. Like I said above. The amount that would be considered per diem is way too much for the allowed 99 per day for Tyler. We just wanted to make sure that we weren't just idiots :-( not understanding.

Thanks

When does Per Diem become taxable?