Sorry to have to disagree with you.
Employee contributions are excluded from wages or salaries. They in fact are decreasing your reportable income.
The fiduciary responsibilty and ownwership rests with the employer, a key factor for making sure that the employee's contributions are tax free/ reducing income.
Employee contributions are excluded from wages or salaries. They in fact are decreasing your reportable income.
Wrong, but you've hit on the source of all the confusion: the BEA's methodology isn't the same as the IRS's. The IRS
excludes some things from adjusted gross income (AGI) that the BEA
includes in income.
This is explained in "Comparison of BEA Estimates of Personal Income and IRS Estimates of Adjusted Gross Income":
Employee contributions to thrift savings plans, primarily 401(k) plans, are included in personal income as wage and salary disbursements but are excluded from AGI."http://www.bea.gov/bea/articles/national/NIPAREL/2000/0200agi.pdf