Originally posted by: DAGTA
Wow, what a bunch of ignorance in this thread.
How many of you know that when you go self employed you automatically get hit with an additional 15.3% in taxes called, get this... "Self Employment Tax"?   Before deductions, my base tax rate is 40.3%.   How many of you pay that much?   At that rate, 16K is 40% of $40,000.  So, if they claimed no deductions, that's what their gross income would have been if they had to pay 16K in taxes.  I started my own business two years ago.  I'm not even close to being rich, but I'm doing better each year.  I go to an accountant for help with my taxes.  After claiming every deduction we both could think of, I still paid about 25% of my gross income in taxes.  
Before I started my own business, my tax bracket was about 25% BEFORE deductions.  My first year in business I made about the same and was in the same bracket (lower middle class) but had that extra 15.3 Self Employment tax, thus putting me at 40.3%.   Once you cross over the 100k a year gross income, you get to pay even more taxes as you move into a higher bracket.
The Federal Gov't spreads a bunch of BS about 'helping the self-employed and small businesses'.  It's just the opposite.  As soon as you start a business, you get hit with MORE taxes.  It truly is the small business owners that shoulder the biggest tax burdens in this country.  That's why self-employed contractors have hourly rates that others think are 'outrageous'.  When you consider that their base tax rate is roughly 40.3%, and they have business expenses that are often NOT 100% deductable, they're not making all that much money.