The number of hours you can practically work is an important factor, as are the risks (illness of various forms, exposure to dangerous customers, ...) that at best further reduce your earning potential for a while or at worse lead to complete curtailment and/or much pain (or even early death).
Simply comparing the hourly pay rate is pretty meaningless when comparing job options like these that differ so massively in other factors.
I'll keep my tech job if it is all the same to you.
(not that I imagine many being willing to pay a good rate for an hour with my physical form, so the choice might not really be mine!)
This is very much not true. In the US, prostitutes are very punctilious about paying their tax bills, because the having a discrepancy between declared income and visible consumption is a quick way to land yourself on an auditor's desk. Remember, they got Al Capone for income tax evasion.
The IRS is very open about this. A fellow HN commenter pointed me to this document [1], on which you should search for "Bribes" and "Stolen Property". Even if you don't want to trust to the IRS's confidentiality rules (for example, it won't share your tax return with law enforcement without a court order), it's still common practice to come up with another description for your income in order to pay tax on it.
In countries like Poland prostitution is actually tax-free, because if government took any money from a prostitute it would act like a pimp, which is illegal.
Once upon a time it was the best excuse for those who had undisclosed income sources (other than prostitution). Recently tax offices started demanding proofs, like names of the clients.
Have you ever wondered why you have to provide receipts for reimbursement, despite the fact that the vast majority of people here could put together a forged receipt quite easily?
It's not because the receipt proves anything. It's because if there was ever any question, it gives a validator something to actually validate, to call up the putative place of business and confirm the transaction and the size.
It's one of those deals where the mere threat of being able to validate tends to keep the system humming along fairly well, even to the point that many of the participants have forgotten the justification for the system. Presumably there's someone out there routinely forging receipts for fun and profit but it must not be that big a fraud considered across the entire system.
I think it is more about getting the client's testimony confirming the deed. And you're right, prostitution is a business based on discretion, so most of the time prostitute would not know the name of her client. Bottom line is: they stopped taking a word for it and started demanding proofs.
I've always been curious where you take your career when you get too old or don't want to do it anymore. There'd be sudden drop off in income level, which applies pressure to any who don't plan well in advance. Makes me think of professional athletes who end up broke because they didn't plan properly and no longer have the body to perform.
Per hour probably isn't a good comparison. Developer per-hour is usually for a medium-large company that wants you for full-time hours and takes care of all risk and overhead for you. Sex worker per-hour is for a client who only wants a hour or whatever, and the worker takes basically all of the risk and overhead as far as rent/hotel rate, travel, supplies, advertising, etc.
Maybe a little more similar to a software consultant who has to spend a ton of extra time drumming up clients and setting up engagements and pays for their travel and any hotel fees out of their rate.
