How do I approach my boss about remaining on student status for the tax benefits?

Question

I'm a student working pretty much full-time as a software developer. Even though I'm a student, that does not mean that my skills are in any way worse than those of other developers. To put it into more business terms: I was hired as a 'regular', not 'junior' developer, and my skills reflect that. This is part of the problem since in my country there's this stigma, where students are treated worse (sometimes even child-like) because everybody believes they are complete greenhorns with no experience in their fields of expertise and their salaries reflect that.<

Basically, right now my boss spends 3,5k each month on my salary (I get less due to taxes and such). Since I'm still a student, I work on a special type of employment contract with less privileges than a regular contract, but also with lower tax rates, so I get more money than a person with regular contract would.

Now, since I was supposed to finish my education, my boss offered me to start working on a regular contract, but my net pay would stay the same. So that means my boss would start spending 5k each month on my salary. The thing is - I decided to not end my education just yet. This means I will still have that student status and as such, I'd like to continue working on that special contract.

And again: since my boss basically offered to spend more on my salary (but all of that money would go into taxes), how do I convince him to keep the higher salary and let me continue working on the 'student contract'? This means that my net pay would increase and I'm afraid my boss is not fond of that idea, partly because of the student stigma and partly because I get the impression he's not very fond of me (and I can see both of these things in our talks).
My education will not impact my working hours in any way, since I will study only on the weekends, meaning the amount of my workhours will actually increase (not by much though, since as I already said, I'm working pretty much full-time).

And just in case: I have also considered looking for a new employer, but that's not the topic here.

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I believe my question is not a duplicate of this question, since I already have been offered a higher salary (although not in a form of direct pay increase), so my boss is already prepared to spend more, and my question focuses on how to keep/receive that, while the other question begins in a point where the person would like to receive any offer.

Answer 1

how do I convince him to keep the higher salary and let me continue working on the 'student contract'?

Since you were already offered 5k, you talk to your boss and say something along the lines of "I'd like to accept that 5k, but I want to continue my education and continue to work on a student contract".

Then you explain the value you provide to the company and why it would be in their interest to have you stick around.

Be ready with a response in the likely scenario where the boss says "No. If you are not going to be with us full time on a regular contract, we'll continue to pay you 3.5k. When you decide your education is complete, we'll talk about a real regular contract." I know you don't want to talk about a new employer here, but you need to figure that out ahead of time so that you'll know how to respond.

Answer 2

If I'm following correctly, your concern isn't that you will be expected to do more work which will impact your studies (as you note that you will study mostly on the weekends). You seem concerned that a higher salary will result in no net gain for you due to taxes, so you are presumably trying to do your company a favor and not have money go to waste. Is that right?

If you really are concerned solely about tax implications, I'd suggest that you double-check your math. If you're living in the USA, there is no such thing a a student tax status that would somehow be changed by having a different contract at work, so you're probably worrying about moving into a higher tax bracket. In that case, be aware that tax brackets are incremental, so when you enter a higher bracket you only pay the higher rate on the amount that falls within the bracket, not the entire amount.