&quot;Still, the UK remains one of the best places in the world to be a contractor. Rates in USA and Canada are a lot lower for contract work, mainly because there isn&#x27;t as much contact work available.&quot;<p>I don&#x27;t know what the overall stats are, but it&#x27;s safe to say that in the Bay Area or NYC you can pretty strong rates, and by pretty strong I say in the ~800&#x2F;day USD or higher range.  That&#x27;s similar to the 500&#x2F;day GBP rates I saw in London.  But of course these numbers vary highly by industry and speciality.  My numbers are DevOps&#x2F;SA senior roles.<p>I&#x27;m a contractor and not a big fanatic of day rates.  Go hourly, if you can, since 40 hour weeks are rare in today&#x27;s world, so daily rates at places like the large investment banks are 10+ hour days, frequently.  I&#x27;d ask 100&#x2F;hr at a bare minimum for a senior role.  You might not get a contract as quickly as you&#x27;d get a full-time role, but the demand is there.<p>Back to the point you raised - there are a great many contract roles  in the U.S., but it&#x27;s very hard to go corp to corp with the client.  The recruiters &#x2F; consulting firms love to skim 40-60% overhead, and it&#x27;s hard to market yourself directly to clients without knowing people.<p>As another datapoint, I had a buddy in the UK who was contracting and there was this scheme where he was being taxed at some absurd rate in the 25% range due to being paid from a trust.  No idea how common or known that is, but in NYC my tax rate&#x27;s in the 45% range (after expenses).