<< Back to glossary. UCS-2 is a character encoding standard in which characters are represented by a fixed-length 16 bits (2 bytes). It is used as a fallback on many GSM networks when a message cannot be encoded using GSM-7 or when a language requires more than 128 characters to be rendered.
Quick Answer. Most U.S. taxpayers with a traditional salary pay 6.2 percent of each paycheck as taxes for social security and 1.45 percent for Medicare, according to the California Tax Service Station. Additional amounts may be deducted from each paycheck for federal withholding or for state fees such as unemployment insurance.
The total Medicare tax is 2.9 percent of gross earned income. If you are self-employed or an independent contractor, you pay both the employer and the employee portion of Social Security and Medicare taxes, for a total of 13.3 percent in 2011.