The more you learn...the more you earn" - Brad Sugars

“Just make up your mind at the very outset that your work is going to stand for quality... that you are going to stamp a superior quality upon everything that goes out of your hands, that whatever you do shall bear the hallmark of excellence.”,,- Orison Swett Marden

Calculate Your Philippine Income Withholding Tax

Hello!

Thank you for visiting my site! I know you are very much interested in learning how to compute for your withholding tax. You are very much concerned about where you money goes especially with the taxes. Why don't you take the next step and read how to manage your finances here

Going back to your withholding taxes. There are two reasons why you should learn how to compute for your withholding tax yourself

One, you doubt the accuracy of your payroll in computing the withholding tax thus for your peace of mind you might want to recheck it yourself. (Yes! It is doable and very easy. Do not be scared of the math)

Secondly, would it not be cool to just know how? I mean. If you go around and ask your co-workers, most likely majority are just looking at the amount under the withholding tax. No one knows how to compute except for the payroll guys. Not fair and this post will help you do that.

Steps in Calculating the Withholding Ta

1. How often do you receive your salary? Do you get it weekly? Monthly? Or just like everyone else who receives it twice a month? It is important to know because the Bureau of Internal Revenue (that’s BIR) has different tables depending on the frequency of you getting your pay. You know. Different strokes for different folks.

2. Review your payslip and look for allowable deductions. These are the government mandated deductions such as SSS, PAG-IBIG (or HDMF) and Philhealth or (PHIC). Note: At this point, we are only talking about mandatory deductions. If you have loans from these institutions, deductions for loan payments should be set aside for now. Just look for the mandated deductions. When I say mandated deductions, these are the deductions you see payroll in and payroll out even if you do not have loans.

3.  Know your tax exemptions status. See list for quick reference

S/ME       Single or Married with no qualified dependent
ME1/S1   Single or Married with one qualified dependent
ME2/S2   Single or Married with two qualified dependent
ME3/S3   Single or Married with three qualified dependent
ME4/S4   Single or Married with four qualified dependent

Are you ready? Get your payslips ready and we are now ready to compute for your withholding tax table.

Step One: Look for your taxable income. You are lucky if your payslip shows a line that says taxable income. Just take note of that and we will use it in the tax table. If you don’t have that line, your taxable income will be your gross salary plus overtime pay plus holiday pay plus night differential plus allowances (other than rice and clothing) minus tardiness deduction minus the government mandated deductions. Still with me?

Let’s take a sample payslip for a single person with no dependents

With the example, we get the taxable income by getting the basic salary less all the deductions. (Reminder again, if you have loans, these should not be deducted for the purpose of computing your income tax). If you are still with me, you should get the amount of P5,771.75


Then we look at the BIR’s withholding tax table for semi-monthly payroll. We look at row 2. S/ME since the person is single with no dependent. In case you are married with three dependents, then you have to use row 3. ME3/S3.

Going back to row 2.S/ME we look where the amount of P5,771.75 falls under. It should be the column where the computed taxable income is higher but not above the next column. In our example, we will select column 5 since P5,771.75 is above P5,000 but below P7,917 under column 6. Still with me? Now, go look for your taxable income and identify under what column it falls into.

Now the fun part. See that the rows saying exemption and status? Those are the numbers needed to compute for your withholding tax.

Continuing with our example, the exemption amount under column 5 is P354.17. Set it aside and do the next step. Deduct P5000 from P5,771.75. Where did we get the P5,000? That’s the intersection of the column and the row. (With our married person with three dependents scenario with P7,000 taxable income, the amount is P6,458. The intersection of the row and column 4)

Now we are left with P771.75 (That’s P5,771.75 less P5,000). We multiply that amount with 20%. Where did I get that 20%? It is right under the P354.17.(With our married person example, we should get 15%. Hope you are still with me)

20% of P354.17 is P154.35. We add the amount to the P354.17 earlier and we get the withholding tax of P508.52

Now, do it and let me know if you got your withholding tax correct. If you need help, comment below and will try to assist. 

Knowing What You Want

Ask anyone if they want a million and you'll sure get a positive response. Everyone wants a million or billion if possible. Then ask what will you do with your million? Set of responses that you'll get will include buying a new house, car, paying off debts, saving it in the bank or starting up a business. The list will go on and on. Dig down a little deeper by asking what kind of business, what kind of house, where will it be located and the response will be slower this time.

It is really easy to say great big things. Everyone wants to get that big goal but not everyone is prepared to really have it. No one has a definite plan of what to do once they get that goal. Not all are prepared to know what to do. 

I read yesterday a blog about a baby crying at 3am. For all parents out there, i'm sure you have experienced this. It is a bit challenge to pacify a baby who constantly cries and have difficulties in communicating what he wants. It is said if you really want something, you must be clear on what you really want. Everything ready to be given to you. We must just be clear as to what we want. In other books that i've read, they said you must be able to clearly see what you want in life. See it in vivid detail as if you already have what you want. It will be the bridge that will lead you in getting what you want in life.

From Evernote:

More Money Making Tips Clipped from: http://www.toasteggme.com/index.php/money-making-talk-etc/more-tips-to-keep-the-money-you-make/

It is said that regardless of how much money you make if you cannot keep the money, than you might not have any money at the end. A lot of millionaires actually did not make a lot of money but they sure know how to keep the money they make. Here's an article from Yahoo Finance title "Stretch Your Paycheck" introduces some tips and guides to keep you keep the money you make and perhaps can help you become a millionaire.

Trim your grocery bill. This is the part where almost every family lost their count of money when it comes to grocery. It is better to set a maximum budget for grocery before heading to the stores. One of the most important things that we need to do is always keep track of our purchase. I always treat it the same as my online business. Either it is grocery or business, over spending is the same as losing money. Another simple way to reduce the expenditure is by using coupons. Honestly I think most people know the existence of coupons but just that most of us are either lazy or too troublesome to use them.

Cut your cell phone bill. This is the part which I mostly over pay for the cell phone bills. In order to cut down the cell phone bill we need to actually take a good look in the plans offered. There are lots of features that we normally don't use or not needed. In fact it will be best to go for prepaid plan if you're not using cell phone that much.

Boost your deductibles. Auto and home insurance always have the space which you can reduce your total payment. In most cases if you're able to increase your monthly payment, you might get a discount.

Switch your TV package. If you have a long working hour job, it's unlikely that you'll spend lots of time in front of the TV. It's better to just cut the cables or satellite TV packages. In fact I think you can get almost everything the same from an online computer.

Rein in your eating out. My mom always tells me that "It's better to cook your own food than dinning outside as you'll save money and it's much healthier." Let us just take a look at how much we spend eating outside. If you actually calculate the money that you spend for the food, coffee and snacks, it can cost as at least quarter of your pay. Make a comparison between cooking for your own food and eating outside. You might be surprise of the amount of money that you can save.

Get rid of your stuff. If you're not using them, sell it. A lot of stuff will be useless or outdated if you keep them for years. It will be better to sell the stuff when there are still some values on them. At least trade it for the money for now. Purchase them if you ever need to use them again. This way you won't be keeping lots of old junk.

Refinance your mortgage. This is the most troublesome method but if you do it right the reward is great. Always consult an expert before taking any action. Careful calculation can help you save few hundred dollars a month.

Unload your second car. If you have a car and you're not using it much, sell it. Car is the one asset that values decreases over time. Besides you need to pay for the maintenance and insurance. Also if you don't drive the car for a long period of time, it can break down easily.

Some of the above actions are just a cut down of the things that you might not needed. Some of the stuff you can get just the same with a lower price if you know where and how. All you need to do is little bit of research and you'll save hundreds of dollars a month. I suppose we call this the smart way to spend money.

"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation." Jacob Bronowski

6 Mistakes That Keep You Fat By: Lisa Jones

Summary

1. Skipping Meals
2. Speed-Eating
3. Pigging Out on Weekends
4. Drinking
5. Eating in Front of TV and Dozing Off

We're not suggesting "The Situation" as a role model. But there is one hard-body lesson you can take from MTV's Jersey Shore loudmouth: The less body fat you carry, the better your abs will show.

Start by performing triage on the six eating habits listed here. But don’t try to banish them all at once. "Target just one or two behaviors at first—ones that you can make the most difference by changing," says Jennifer McDaniel, R.D., of St. Louis University.

The reason: Recent studies show that we have only so much willpower. That's why trying to break several bad habits at once can be overwhelming. But if you follow the slow and steady approach, you’ll increase your odds of sculpting a thinner, fitter physique—and keeping it for life.

Skipping Meals or Snacks

Not eating can mess with your body's ability to control your appetite. But it also destroys willpower, which is just as damaging. "Regulating yourself is a brain activity, and your brain runs on glucose," says Martin Ginis. If you skip breakfast or a healthy snack, your brain doesn't have the energy to say no to the inevitable chowfest.

So skipping a feed helps turn us into gluttons at night. Your starving brain "just doesn't have the fuel it needs to keep you on track, monitoring your diet.

Break it: This one's easy. Spread your calories out into three meals of about 500 calories each, and two snacks of 100 to 200 calories each, says Liz Applegate, Ph.D., director of sports nutrition at the University of California at Davis. Most men who are trying to lose weight still need at least 1,800 to 2,200 calories a day, says Applegate. More important, change your mindset, she says. Think I'm going to start a new routine, not I'm going to restrict myself. Restriction leads to overeating

Speed-Eating

Use the nondiet approach: You're not denying yourself food, you're just eating it more slowly. Savoring it. Allowing your body some time so you don't keep eating when you're full.

In an experiment published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 17 healthy men ate 11/4 cups of ice cream. They either scarfed it in 5 minutes or took half an hour to savor it. According to study author Alexander Kokkinos, M.D., Ph.D., levels of fullness-causing hormones (called PYY and GLP-1), which signal the brain to stop eating, were higher among the 30-minute men. In real life, the scarfers wouldn't feel as full and could be moving on to another course.

Break it: Your body is trying to tell you something, so give it a chance. Slow down and enjoy your food, says Dr. Kokkinos. Put away the newspaper and turn off the TV. Try this breathing trick from The Yoga Body Diet: Inhale while counting slowly to five; exhale and count slowly to five; repeat three to five times before eating. A study in a 2009 issue of Journal of the American Dietetic Association shows that yoga increases mindful eating and results in less weight gain over time

Pigging Out on Weekends

Weekend feasts can cause trouble beyond Sunday. In a recent study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, researchers used rats to examine the effects of palmitic acid on leptin, a hormone that helps regulate appetite. Palmitic acid is found in saturated fat, an ingredient often featured in your favorite weekend grub

"We found that within 3 days, the saturated fat blunts or blocks the ability of leptin to regulate food intake and body weight," says study author Deborah Clegg, Ph.D., of the University of Texas Southwestern medical center. So a Friday to Sunday of burgers, fries, and wings may prime your brain to overeat on Monday.

Break it: You don't have to go cold turkey (though turkey on whole wheat is always smart). McDaniel suggests that your reward for a healthy week should be one cheat meal, not an entire weekend of them. After all, having an all-you-can-eat weekend is like eating poorly for nearly 30 percent of your week. That means you'd be eating well just 70 percent of the time. We call that a C minus. Do you really want below-average result

Gorging on Salty Snacks

Sodium is insidious—it causes us to eat unconsciously. It adds up fast: popcorn at the movies, chips during the game, peanuts at the bar. 

Break it: Salt cravings go away after a couple of weeks on a reduced-salt diet, says Thomas Moore, M.D., an associate provost at Boston University medical center. Not many men can replace their favorite snacks with carrots or celery, but give them a try: The crunch may be what you crave. Otherwise, try small amounts of low-sodium chips and pretzels. As you're cooking a dish, skip the salt and, if you want, add just a dash at the table. "Salt added to the surface of a food item is far more noticeable than the same amount of salt cooked into a recipe," says Dr. Moore. A slow reduction of your salt habit pays off in fewer cravings, he says.

Drinking

Alcohol, that is. Here's an exercise to start tonight: Write down how much beer, wine, and other drinks you consume in a week. (Use that cocktail napkin.) You may surprise yourself. Calculate the calories and expect another surprise. A reasonable-sounding two beers a night can mean more than 2,000 calories a week—almost an extra day's worth. It can take more than 2 hours of running to burn that off . You call that a weight-loss plan? Besides the empty calories, booze undermines your willpower, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, R.D., spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. Which leads to impulse orders of, say, Buffalo wings.

Break it: Try quitting—for just a week. Check your weight and how your pants fit. See if you can live on less. When you do drink, switch to lower-carb dry red wine (about 4 grams of carbohydrates compared with almost 13 in a regular beer) or low-carb beer.

Eating in Front of the TV, Then Dozing Off

It's a double whammy with a twist. You ingest calories while burning none, and sabotage your secret weight-loss weapon: sleep. Research confirms that people who eat in front of the tube consume more calories (nearly 300, in one study) than those who don't, and that the more TV they watch, the less active they are. And University of Chicago researchers found that people who lost 3 hours of sleep ate about 200 more calories the next day in snacks than those who slept 81/2 hours.

Break it: Donald Hensrud, M.D., medical editor-in-chief of The Mayo Clinic Diet, says, "If you want to watch TV, be active at the same time or go work out and come back—then you can treat yourself with some TV." And make your DVR earn its keep so you can go to bed on a regular schedule. Sleep is a fine habit when done correctly.