Excuse my ignorance on this matter, but do occupations like police officers, firemen, elected politicians, etc pay income tax on their salaries?
Yes they do.
Zev Steinhardt
You’d better believe they do, or at least are supposed to. My father was a government employee for 30 years and always paid income tax.
Even the president’s $400,000 a year salary is taxable (although he does have an additional, smaller expense account that is non-taxable).
Zev Steinhardt
It used to be that Federal employees didn’t pay into Social Security - we had our own system, the Civil Service Retirement System, and were exempt. That all changed around 15 years ago, and all Feds hired since then are under the Federal Employees’ Retirement System. FERS is a mix of SS/savings/employer matching, and it’s portable if you leave Federal service.
There’s only a few of us old birds left still grandfathered under CSRS. 
Pantellerite: State Employee, Taxpayer
In short: “Yes.”
First, I assume you are talking U.S. There are many posters here from other countries, where the rules might be different.
But the more precise answer is that they have to FILE tax returns, of course, like any other citizen or resident. Whether they actually PAY any tax depends on income level, number of exemptions, amount of deductions, etc.
Yes they do, my wife works for the state.
What also might amaze you is that people that collect social security are also taxed on that income.
And depending on what state you live in, you are double taxed on your income, once when you earn it, and again when you pay a sales tax or property tax. In CA you used to be able to deduct your sales tax from your state tax, but not anymore.
There are a lot of websites that gather statistics on taxes, usually these are biased that you pay too much tax.
http://www.americanreformation.org/policy/Taxes/taxes.htm
Then there is the government information about who pays what taxes, but that data is, for some unknown reason, a few years behind. This is a link to a university with that data.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/documents/resources/tax99/taxfacts.shtml
If you are weighing taking a state or government job v. the private sector, taxes are not part of the equation. However you might want to look at Job security and benifits, which are usually better in the government v the private sector. Of course, if there is a problem with the budget, then you may have to go a month or two without pay till it gets ironed out.
I’m a U.S. government employee, and I do pay taxes. They withold them accordingly from my paycheck. I likes it, 'tis very convenient.
Drat!
You mean these past 16 years …?
Oh man, I hope no one finds out!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but I beilieve that members of the US Congress still do not pay into S.S. They have their own system set up. It’s amazing that this is allowed to stand…
Isn’t there a municipality (El Paso, maybe?) that also opted out of SS and set up their own system?
Zev Steinhardt
The last job I worked at, a state university position in Illinois, did not pay into SS either, but into their own type of pension system.
Whoops, that was Galveston County, Texas.
Zev Steinhardt
When I was younger (much younger), I couldn’t understand why government workers were taxed. It seemed like a waste of time to pay them and then take it back. There are two reasons I can think of for taxing government employees.
[ul][1] The rest of us would bitch about them not being taxed.
[2] They would bitch about not getting to take advantage of deductions.[/ul]
My wife did a Junior Achievement program with second-graders (in the US) last year that included the OP’s question. They all knew that the asnwer was yes.
Strangely enough, Galveston did indeed opt out of Social Security. Here’s a Social Security Administration report.
At one time almost all state and local government positions were exempt from paying Social Security taxes. Over the years some of these opted to join the Social Security system, but there are still a lot of them that didn’t, preferring (as Galveston did) to set up their own retirement program.
As a municipal employee, I don’t pay into Social Security, just Medicare. A coworker asked me if she could make voluntary contributions to Social Security.
I talked her out of that.
I’m a “public employee” in Ohio (not State, not County, long story) and I pay into the Public Employee’s Retirement System rather than Social Security. I do, however, pay all the usual income taxes.