Question

A man pays 20% of his salary as tax and has 24,000$ left. How much did he pay as tax

Answer 1

He paid $6,000 in taxes.

Explanation:

His final amount after taxes is $24000. In order to obtain this number we had to tax 20% of the total (Note that 100%-20%=80%). In other words if he was taxed 20% he took home 80% of what he was paid. Therefore mathematically we have:

`0.8A_(pre-tax)=A_(taxed)`

Since we know he was left with $24000 after taxes then:

`0.8A_(pre-tax)=24000\\\\(0.8A_(pre-tax))/(0.8)=(24000)/(0.8)\\\\A_(pre-tax)=(24000)/(0.8)\\\\A_(pre-tax)=30000`

So originally he had $30,000. So how much did he pay in taxes? We can calculate the difference of both pretax and after tax and we get:

$30,000 - $24,000= $6,000 taxed