<prompt> Human: So I think I understand the basics and gist of taxable income and taxes in general when people are saying taxes. like federal withholdings are there to help people pay taxes without the individuals setting money aside themselves right?but I am confused on the fact that I also get some wages deducted on my paycheck for medicare and social security. I always assumed they were all things included in this tax term everyone loosely uses. but i guess there are taxes tax and SS tax, and medicare tax?how are these calculated? with income tax, you dont pay taxes if you are under a certain amount like if for a single individual, gross income - standard deductions - personal exemptions is negative, you dont owe taxes. but how about for the other tax stuff? do you have to pay those no matter what?reason for this question is because I got my first ever career job 4 weeks ago. and got my first paycheck 2 weeks ago. I put my W4 allowances as 10 because i calculated that I will make much less than the 10300 for the year, and I wont owe any taxes. however, I still got medicare and SS taxes taken.  <response>: You pay social security taxes at a flat rate on the first 127,000ish of annual income. Even if you put it into a 401k. Same thing for Medicare, but no cap there.The total rate for both is 7.65, so you pay that up to the social security cap, then it drops to 1.45 for just Medicare. 