Almost always gross. When you hear "I make $150,000" in 99.9% of cases that will be the number that are hired at. For that exact number I would expect the actual annual cash in hand to be close to $80,000.
Note that is VERY individual circumstances specific. The largest chunk of that missing $70,000 went to taxes at the local, state, and federal level. Easily $45,000 of it is gone in taxes. There is also a common game of moving pre tax dollars around that benefit you, but not exactly the same way a dollar in hand would.
The two most common are 401ks (typically 4-8% of gross depending on employee matching) which is money that goes into a retirement account for you and you can't touch it until you are old (55 or 65 or something, not up to date on the numbers there) without incurring both a significant penalty of 10% but also having to pay tax on it the year you withdrawal it. There are a few hardship exclusions like medical, first time home buying etc, where you can dip into this untaxed pool of money but for the most part can't touch it until retirement.
The other common pre tax exclusion is an HSA where you get to put pre taxed dollars into an account that can only be used to pay for medical expenses. Essentially every high dollar professional in America takes full advantage of this offering as we all expect to have out of pocket medical expenses and it makes no sense to pay them with taxed dollars instead of pre taxed dollars.
> Essentially every high dollar professional in America takes full advantage of this offering as we all expect to have out of pocket medical expenses and it makes no sense to pay them with taxed dollars instead of pre taxed dollars.
Not really. HSAs are common for sure, but people with high incomes often can afford lower deductible policies. You can't open an HSA unless you have a high-deductible health insurance policy.
I've done it both ways, and I personally prefer paying more for a better insurance policy and not having to bother with HSA paperwork.
Gross. In general you couldn't really quote net salaries in the US as your taxes partly depend on which state you live in. So for example, if you work in DC, you could plausibly be living in either DC, Maryland or Virginia, and your taxes would differ accordingly. You'll also most likely have a choice of different health and pension plans at different costs.
