@TuckerdogAVL wrote:
So, I'll continue to see if I can get an answer to my original question. Your advice, I'm sure, will help some people who have never had a job, never worked, never had self employment income, has never invested in anything or works for tips. The best thing I can probably do is see if I can find someone in a particular state that can answer a question... but of course for a fee. Because that's what we do in America. Thanks for your time.
You need to go back and read my original answer. We don't know what you need to know because we don't know how any particular web site makes calculations or what the tax laws are of the states you are considering.
As far as federal law is concerned, "compensation" for work performed, also called earned income, includes both wages and self-employment income. The only important difference federally is that for wages, your employer pays half your social security and medicare tax and you pay the other half; and for self-employment, you pay both halves because you are both the employer and the employee.
I don't know of any state that taxes wage compensation differently than self-employment compensation, but I don't know the laws of all 50 states. Therefore, I would assume that if a retirement planner talks about "wages", they are really including all forms of "compensation" including self-employment. But you would have to check with the web site to see if that is really what they are basing their calculations on.
