Why not net income when you are certainly taking home less than you earned after taxes that are mandatory? Then when you include health insurance it’s much less.
Edit:Typo
In: Economics
Gross includes some things (taxes) which are pretty standard for most people, but also some discretionary things (like 401k contributions) which are available but not present in net.
So for example, if I put $1000/month into 401k contributions, then if I hit a rough patch and couldn’t pay my mortgage, I could easily drop my 401k contributions to 0 temporarily and then could easily cover the mortgage.
Depending on who’s asking, something like that might be what they’re considering.
That’s a little different from asking for total compensation, which is gross plus what your employer throws in for things like healthcare, insurance, 401k matches, etc. You wouldn’t have access to that no matter what, and it’s not standardized like payroll taxes (social security and medicare), so gross is a better thing to look at.
Usually places asking for that will also ask for a paystub or something so they can see how much goes where and then they have both your net and your gross, as well as a clear picture of what portion of the difference is discretionary and what portion is mandatory.
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