How is income made up?

I’m not sure if I quite understood your question so please forgive me if I’m way off track.

Are you referring to income as wages and salary earned or income as profit / revenues which a self employed person receives? I’m going to go with the former as I have no idea how business revenue works.

Salary or wages (income), has a ‘before tax’ and an ‘after tax’ amounts. Your gross amount always appear to be more as you have not been taxed yet. After tax (the percentage of tax depends on which country you’re from etc), this amount becomes your Net Wages…BUT… before you get the money deposited into your bank account, payroll deducts the following from your gross salary:

• Your superannuation (9%) - compulsory as this fund is for when you get really old and retire so the government doesn’t have to pay for your retirement.

• Your HECS (any current or pass tertiary debts from attending university or higher education). If you earn over a certain threshold you have to pay the compulsory 4% or more to the Education Department (government).

• This does not apply to most of us (unfortunately) but those who do earn a medium to high salary, tend to offset this by buying a car which the companies pays for and then they deduct a monthly amount out of the person’s gross salary, which basically means they are earning ‘less’ and hence are taxed less…But the car doesn’t belong to them until they pay it off and have to meet the compulsory mileage each month or the person leasing the car gets penalised more.

There you have it… sorry once again, if my advice isn’t really what you are after.