Also, even if what you say on this is correct, it's still not true that the employee "paying several magnitudes the tax the contractor pays". The employee would pay more (if he was earning the same amount), but not "several magnitudes"*.
* I assume he meant either "several orders of magnitude", which is so wrong as to be laughable but seems closest to what he said, or "several times". If the latter, I would generally define "several" in integer terms as "more than 2", so 3 or greater. I doubt that any contractor is legitimately (legally) paying a third of the tax a permie would pay on the same gross, assuming the permie is taking advantage of the tax breaks available to him... Especially if you discount the things a contractor is paying for which a permie would have been provided by his employer.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
