Professional services
Self-Employment Tax Calculator
Self-employment tax on business earnings, and the half of it that is deductible.
Result
Not tax advice, and not a filing calculation. This estimates what to set aside using rates you supply. Brackets, thresholds, deductions, credits and state rules change every year and interact with the rest of your return in ways no single calculator models. Confirm anything that affects a payment or a filing with an accountant. Self-employment tax applies to about 92.35% of net earnings, and half of it is deductible against income tax. The Social Security portion stops above an annual earnings threshold that changes each year; this does not model that cap, so it overstates the tax for higher earners. An additional Medicare surtax applies above certain income thresholds and is not modelled here.
Get a Free Business AuditQuestions
About this calculator
Why 92.35%?
It approximates the employer-side deduction an employee would receive. Employers deduct their half of payroll tax, so the self-employed are allowed an equivalent adjustment before the tax is calculated.
Why is it 15.3% when my payslip showed 7.65%?
Because an employee pays half and the employer pays the other half. Self-employed people are both, so they pay both, with half deductible against income tax.
Does W-2 income reduce it?
The Social Security portion, yes. Wages already count toward the annual wage base, so less self-employment income falls under it. Medicare has no cap and is unaffected.
The formula
net earnings x 92.35%, then 12.4% Social Security up to the wage base plus 2.9% Medicare with no cap
Put this calculator on your site
Free to embed. Paste this where you want it to appear. It stays up to date automatically because it loads from BDEVY.
Please keep the attribution line. It is the only thing we ask in return.
Estimating is the easy part
The jobs you never hear about cost more than the ones you mis-measure. BDEVY builds the marketing, systems and automation that bring them in.