Freelance Tax Estimator

How to use it

1. Enter your annual gross income, your deductible business expenses, your self-employment tax percentage (defaulting to 15.3%, the combined US Social Security and Medicare rate), your estimated income tax percentage, and any additional deductions. The tool subtracts expenses from gross income to find net business income, and also subtracts your deductions to find taxable income. Self-employment tax then follows the IRS Schedule SE mechanics: it applies to 92.35% of net business earnings, the 12.4% Social Security portion caps at the 2026 wage base of $184,500, and the 2.9% Medicare portion is uncapped. Income tax is a flat estimate at the rate you enter, so the accuracy of your set-aside depends on realistic expense and rate figures.
2. Read taxable income, self-employment tax, estimated income tax, total annual tax, the quarterly payment (total divided by four), your effective tax rate, and your take-home pay. The quarterly figure is the practical output most freelancers come for, because it is the amount to move into a separate account every three months to avoid a painful balance and underpayment penalties at filing time.
3. Treat the effective tax rate as your reality check on pricing. If your total tax lands near a third of gross income, then a project quoted without accounting for it is a third less profitable than it looks. This is the number that should inform your rates in the consulting day rate and project pricing tools, not your headline revenue.
4. Use the quarterly payment to build a discipline rather than a surprise. Set aside that amount the moment each invoice is paid instead of at the deadline, and re-run whenever a large new contract changes your bracket or a major deductible expense (equipment, home office, software) lands. Test a higher-income scenario to see how much your set-aside rises if a strong quarter pushes you up.
5. This is a planning estimate, not tax advice. It models the 92.35% net-earnings factor and the Social Security wage-base cap, and deducts half your self-employment tax before income tax, but it does not apply state and local tax rules, credits, the standard deduction or the qualified business income deduction for you (add them as deductions), and income tax is your effective rate rather than a bracket calculation. Use it to avoid being caught short, then confirm the real number with a qualified accountant before you file, especially in your first year of self-employment.

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Use it from code

The same calculation as a JavaScript module you can import. It runs where you import it, with no request, key or rate limit.

import { compute } from "https://aibizhub.io/engines/freelance-tax-estimator.js";

Input and output contract, TypeScript types and the guide for agents.