Guide · Time
The time tax: hours your job takes but doesn’t pay for
Your contract says how many hours you’re paid for. It doesn’t count the hours you spend getting to work, or the evenings that run late. Those unpaid hours are the time tax, and over a year they add up to weeks.
What counts as time tax
- Commuting. Time spent getting to and from your place of work. You can’t spend it on anything else, and nobody pays you for it.
- Unpaid overtime. Hours worked beyond your contract without extra pay: answering email at night, staying late before a deadline, working through lunch.
Paid overtime isn’t time tax, and neither is a commute you genuinely work through, if your employer counts it as working time.
How quickly it adds up
Small daily amounts become large annual ones. Here is the average round-trip public transit commute in each city the calculator covers, and what it comes to over a year at five office days a week:
| City | Round trip | Hours a year | Eight-hour days |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | 102 min | 442 | 55 |
| San Francisco | 86 min | 373 | 47 |
| Chicago | 99 min | 429 | 54 |
| Austin | 99 min | 429 | 54 |
| US average | 99 min | 429 | 54 |
| Toronto | 110 min | 477 | 60 |
| Vancouver | 120 min | 520 | 65 |
| London | 100 min | 433 | 54 |
Average one-way transit commutes, doubled. Chicago, Austin and the US average use the national figure because no city-specific one was found. Sources are linked on each city page.
Unpaid overtime grows the same way. Five extra hours a week, about one late evening, comes to 260 hours a year: more than six full 40-hour weeks.
What it does to your hourly pay
Every unpaid hour is paid for by the same salary, so the time tax lowers what you earn per hour. Take a typical Chicago job at $73,380, commuting five days a week by train:
- With no unpaid overtime, it pays $21.14 for each hour it takes.
- Add five hours of unpaid overtime a week, and that falls to $19.16.
- Fully remote with no overtime, the same salary pays $26.93.
The calculator shows your own time tax in hours and in eight-hour days, and what that time would be worth at your advertised hourly rate.
Ways to cut it
- Negotiate office days. Each day a week you don’t commute gives back a full round trip, every week of the year. On a 110-minute round trip, the Toronto average, one day a week is about 95 hours a year.
- Travel outside the rush. Starting earlier or later can shorten the same journey, especially by road.
- Make overtime visible. Keep a simple log for a month. It’s easier to talk about workload, or ask for time off in lieu, with numbers in hand.
- Count it when you compare jobs. A higher salary with a long commute can pay less per hour than a lower one close to home. See Is a raise worth a longer commute?