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What is Gross Pay?| Definitions & Examples

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Gross pay is defined as the total amount of money an employee receives before taxes and deductions are taken out. It is the employee’s income before any pension or salary sacrifice deduction. It may include salary (annual rate), wages (hourly rate), bonuses or reimbursements (if any), vacation pay, holiday pay, or commissions.

What is gross pay? Gross pay is the agreed amount by the employer before any taxes and deductions. It is also called gross income.

Gross Pay Definition

A few versions of the gross pay definition and key points are listed below:

  • Gross pay is defined as the amount of income before any deductions or contributions are subtracted from the total earnings.
  • It is the total amount of money an employee receives before taxes and deductions are taken out.
  • Gross income for a business includes the gross revenue of the firm and less cost of goods sold, but it does not include all of the other costs involved in running the business.

What is Gross Pay?

Gross pay is the individual’s total pay from his or her employer before any taxes and deductions. It is not limited to income received in cash; it also includes property or services received. All calculations for employee pay, for instance, over time, withholding, and deductions are based on it.

Components

  • Wages (hourly rate) and salaries (annual rate) and Bonuses (if any)
  • Shift differentials and Commissions
  • Piece rate pay/ Sick pay
  • Vacation pay/Holiday pay

Examples

  • A business has sales of €1,000,000, cost of goods sold of €400,000, and selling expenses of €300,000. Its gross income is €600,000 and its net income is €300,000.
  • A person earns a wage of €1,000 and pays €200 tax. His gross income is €1,000 and his net income is €800.
  • Assume that Mike earns an annual income of €50,000 from his financial management consultancy work, €60,000 from his real estate properties, €20,000 in dividends from shares he owns at Company XYZ, and €1,000 in interest income from his savings account. Mike’s gross income is as follows:
    Gross Income = 50,000 + 60,000 + 20,000 + 1,000 = €131,000

Taxable income

Taxable pay is an employee’s gross pay less any contributions employee makes to a:

  • Pension scheme
  • Permanent Health Benefit (Income Continuance) scheme
  • Salary Sacrifice Arrangement
  • Personal Retirement Savings Account (PRSA)
  • Retirement Annuity Contract (RAC). 
What is taxable pay? taxable pay is the pay after deducting gross pay, health benefits, and retirement annuity contract

What is Net Income?

Net income is the profit earned by a business or individual after subtracting all expenses.
For an individual, net income is the income earned after paying all taxes, for instance, state and federal taxes, social security taxes, health insurance, etc.
For businesses, It is calculated by subtracting all the business expenses such as taxes, advertising costs, and interest expenses, plus any eligible deductions like professional and legal fees.

Net pay is profit after deduction of all taxes from taxable pay. It is different from gross pay.

Net income (also total comprehensive income, net earnings, net profit, bottom line, sales profit, or credit sales) is an entity’s income less the cost of goods sold, costs, depreciation and amortization, interest, and taxes for a given accounting period.

What Is Money?

Money is such a medium of exchange that is considered a suitable method of payment by both buyer and seller. It is used for buying goods or services. Some well-known mediums of exchange are coins, notes, and credit cards. In the modern world, most money today is in the form of cheques, drafts, and bank credits.

Calculating Gross Pay for Hourly Employees

  • Calculate the number of hours worked during the pay period.
  • Take into account any absences or other causes for irregular hours.
  • Multiply the number of hours worked by the hourly pay rate.
  • In case there is overtime, make sure to include the overtime hours in the gross pay.
  • Do not add benefits that may be taxable to the employee’s income.
  • For example, the gross pay of an individual who worked 10 hours at the rate of $12 per hour, would be $120.

What Cannot be Included in Gross Income?

Gross income includes, but is not limited to, the following listed types of income [Reference].

  • Taxes
  • Insurance
  • Retirement contributions
  • Rental income
  • interest income
  • Dividends
  • Capital gain dividends
  • Constructive dividends
  • Alimony
  • Property settlements income
  • Pension and other qualified retirement plan distributions
  • A life insurance payment

What can be Included In Gross Income?

  • Base salary or hourly wages
  • Overtime 
  • Commissions
  • Bonuses
  • Reimbursements for such things as employee meals and lodging
  • Pay received for vacation time or sick leave
  • Tips

Summary

  • Gross pay is the amount of salary or wages paid to the individual by an employer before any taxes and deductions.
  • Taxable income is the amount of gross income after subtracting deductions.
  • Net income is the profit earned by a business or individual after all deductions have been taken from gross pay, such as payroll taxes, garnishments, and retirement plan contributions.

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A compiler is a process that converts high-level programming language source code to low-level machine language.

2. What is the Googlebot called?

Googlebot is a generic name for Google’s web crawler. Googlebot is the umbrella term for two sorts of crawlers: a desktop crawler that mimics a desktop user and a mobile crawler that simulates a mobile device user.

3. Biochip in simple words?

A biochip is a small-scale device that is used to study organic chemicals present in live organisms.
In simple words, a biochip is a small laboratory that can perform hundreds of biological activities concurrently. It is a collection of micro-test sites or microarrays arranged on the surface of a solid substrate that is meant to run many tests at once in order to achieve increased speed and throughput.

4. What Does Decompile Mean?

Decompilation is the process of transforming machine-readable code into human-readable source code that retains the original code’s functionality. The opposite of compiling is decompiling.

5. What does the concept of provisioning mean?

The process of making IT resources, data, and other technical services available to users and customers is known as provisioning. It’s a broad term that encompasses a wide range of services, the most significant of which is initial service setup.

6. How does the concept of brainstorming work?

Brainstorming is a group activity in which each member expresses their ideas as they arise. Ideas are classified and graded at the end of the session for further action.

7. What is the concept of canonical in computer sciences?

Canonical refers to an attribute’s standard state or behavior in computer science. This term is derived from mathematics and is used to denote unique and/or natural concepts.

8. What is meant by the Internet of Things?

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a computer concept that aims to turn our physical environment into a complex and dynamic network of linked objects on a massive scale. In other terms, the Internet of Things refers to physical items equipped with sensors, computing power, software, and other technologies that communicate with and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communication networks.

9. Define alliteration?

Alliteration (also known as head rhyme, start rhyme, or front rhyme) is a linguistic method in which a string of words or phrases uses the same letter or letter combinations over and over. ‘Tasty tacos,’ for example, is an alliteration, but ‘thirty typists,’ is not since the letters ‘th’ and ‘ty’ do not sound the same.

10. Is Python a compiler?

Python is an interpreted language, which means that a Python program’s source code is translated into bytecode before being run by the Python virtual machine. Python differs from major compiled languages such as C and C + + in that Python code does not need to be produced and linked in the same way that code for these languages does.

11. What is money laundering?

Money laundering is the process of concealing the origins of illegal money by passing it through a complex sequence of banking transactions.

12. What is smurfing?

Many criminals participate in an activity called smurfing.
Smurfing involves dividing cash gained through illegal activities and giving the funds to different people (the Smurfs).
Smurfs proceeds to make multiple deposits into multiple accounts at different banks. 

13. What is gross pay meaning in simple words?

Gross pay meaning refers to the amount of money that an individual earns throughout a given period of time before any deductions are made.

14. Are gross pay and basic pay the same?

Gross pay and basic pay are not the same. The basic wage is the amount agreed upon between a company and its employee, excluding bonuses, overtime, or other forms of additional remuneration.
On the other hand, a gross salary includes overtime pay and bonuses but excludes taxes and other deductions.

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Calculate working hours by assessing the number of hours put in during the period. Also, consider any absences or other causes for irregular hours.
Determine the pay rate by assessing the amount of money earned during the period. Also, include any additional income such as overtime.
Multiply hours worked by the amount earned.


Determine the amount of money earned annually.
Determine the pay structure by determining how the company’s pay structure works. For instance, some are either weekly, bi-weekly, or semi-monthly.
Divide salary by the number of the pay period

Bottom Line

This article covers the question “what is gross pay?”. We hope that this post enables you to differentiate between gross pay, taxable pay, and net pay. If you have any questions please free to post a comment.

Author
Umair Javed
Umair has been working at Whatsinsight since 2020 as a content writer.
He has a Masters degree in Material Science.

Umair Javaid, PhD Student
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