Final answer:
Juan must pay self-employment tax as well as income tax on the earnings of his flower shop proprietorship. The self-employment tax includes both Social Security and Medicare taxes at a rate that encompasses both the employee and the employer's share.
Step-by-step explanation:
If Juan recently started operating a flower shop as a proprietorship and had a taxable income of $60,000 in its first year of operations, and assuming Juan had no other employment-related earnings, the correct option would be D) Juan must pay self-employment tax on the earnings of the business.
As a self-employed individual, Juan is required to pay both income tax on the earnings as well as self-employment tax. Self-employment tax is a combination of Social Security tax and Medicare tax.
It's important to remember that self-employment tax is different from income tax; while income tax is based on adjusted gross income, self-employment taxes fund Social Security and Medicare programs.
Furthermore, for a self-employed individual such as Juan, the Social Security tax is not just the 6.2% that is for employees; self-employed individuals pay a combined employee and employer rate of 12.4%, because they are essentially both the employee and the employer.
Additionally, Medicare tax rate is 2.9% for the self-employed. These taxation guidelines hold for the federal level, and different states may have additional tax requirements for businesses operating within their jurisdictions.