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Self-employed tax calculator: what should I set aside?
Most advice says "put away 25% to 30% and hope." That's a guess. Some freelancers tie up money they could have used all year, and others get a bill in April they can't cover. This self-employed tax calculator uses your actual numbers and tells you what to put aside for federal taxes in 2026.
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Set aside each quarter
$0
Total for the year
$0
Where that comes from
| Self-employment tax (Social Security and Medicare) | $0 |
| Income tax | $0 |
| Already taken out of paychecks | $0 |
| Total still to pay | $0 |
The arithmetic is the easy part. What makes this hard is that the number moves every time you get paid or drive somewhere for work, so a figure you worked out in August is wrong by October. ExpenseDuck recalculates it as the year goes.
Get Early AccessWhat this self-employed tax calculator includes, and what it leaves out
Working for yourself means two federal taxes instead of one. There's self-employment tax, which is Social Security and Medicare. At a job your employer pays half of that and you never see it. On your own, you pay all of it. Then regular income tax comes on top. The calculator works out both and adds them together.
Self-employment tax is 15.3%, and you pay it on about 92% of your profit rather than every dollar. The Social Security part stops once you've made $184,500 in a year. You also get to take half of what you pay in self-employment tax off your income before the income tax is worked out, which brings that second number down.
State tax isn't in here. If your state taxes income, you need to put aside more than this number.
There's also a break called the qualified business income deduction that a lot of freelancers can take. We left it out because the guidelines from the IRS are too fuzzy to make it accurate here, so your real bill may come in lower than what you see. We'd rather you save a bit too much than a bit too little.
Two more things worth saying. We assume you take the standard deduction, so if you itemise your numbers will be different. All filing statuses use the IRS tax lookup tables from 2026 pages, so we assume the IRS is providing accurate numbers here.
Common questions about quarterly taxes
How much should I actually set aside?
Both numbers are up top: what you owe for the whole year, and what that comes to each quarter. You'll see 25% to 30% suggested all over the internet. That's a guess from someone who doesn't know what you earn or who else is in your household.
What happens if I pay too little?
The IRS can charge you a penalty. There are two ways to stay clear of it. Pay at least 90% of what you'll owe this year, or pay 100% of what you owed last year, whichever of those is smaller. If you made over $150,000 last year, that second option goes up to 110%. And if you end up owing less than $1,000 once your paycheck withholding is counted, there's no penalty at all.
Do I have to pay every quarter?
If you expect to owe $1,000 or more, yes. Some freelancers with a spouse on a regular paycheck skip the quarterly payments and have extra tax taken out of that paycheck instead.
ExpenseDuck provides estimates, not tax advice, and never files your taxes. Consult a licensed tax professional for your specific situation.