Self-Employment Tax Calculator
Tax & IncomeTax on freelance and business income.
Self-employment income
Enter your net profit to begin.
Advanced options
Enter your net profit to begin.
2026 self-employment tax rates
| Component | Rate | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Social Security | 12.4% | Net SE earnings up to $184,500 |
| Medicare | 2.9% | All net SE earnings — no ceiling |
| Additional Medicare | 0.9% | Net SE earnings over $200,000 |
Your inputs
| Input | What it is | Your value |
|---|---|---|
| Net business profit | Business profit after expenses | $0 |
| Filing status | Sets the Additional Medicare threshold | Single |
| Tax year | The year's wage base and limits | 2026 |
This calculator provides estimates of US self-employment (SECA) tax for general information only and is not legal or tax advice. Your actual tax depends on your full return; consult a qualified tax professional before filing or making payments.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- United States unless the calculator explicitly says otherwise
- Rules and time period
- Tax years supported by the selected calculator
- Scope and limitations
- Educational estimate only, not a tax return or filing determination. U.S. statutory-threshold tools use USD. Confirm current law and your facts with the relevant authority or a qualified tax professional.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter your net business profit — gross self-employment income minus your deductible business expenses, the figure from Schedule C line 31 or a partnership K-1 — then pick the tax year and your filing status.
- 02
If you also hold a W-2 job, open Advanced options and enter the Social Security and Medicare wages from that job so the calculator can share the Social Security wage cap and set the Additional Medicare threshold correctly.
- 03
Optionally set your marginal income-tax rate so the tool can show what the one-half-of-self-employment-tax deduction is worth to you in income-tax savings.
- 04
Read your results: the 92.35% net-earnings step, the Social Security and Medicare portions, your total self-employment tax, the deductible half, any 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax, and a four-payment quarterly schedule.
Formula
The calculator first converts your net business profit into net earnings from self-employment by multiplying it by 92.35% (net SE earnings = net profit × 0.9235); the 7.65% it removes mirrors the employer-side payroll tax a salaried worker never pays on. If those net earnings are below $400 there is no self-employment tax at all. Otherwise it splits the tax in two: a Social Security portion of 12.4% that applies only to net earnings up to that year's wage base — reduced first by any W-2 Social Security wages you already paid at a job — and a Medicare portion of 2.9% that applies to every dollar of net earnings with no ceiling. Self-employment tax is the sum of those two (SE tax = Social Security portion + Medicare portion), and you may deduct exactly half of it as an above-the-line adjustment on your return. The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax is computed separately on Form 8959: it applies to net earnings above your filing-status threshold, with that threshold reduced by any W-2 Medicare wages first. The quarterly figure is simply the total divided into four equal estimated payments.
Example
Take a freelancer with $80,000 of net profit, filing single. The calculator multiplies $80,000 by 92.35% to get $73,880 of net self-employment earnings — comfortably under the Social Security wage base, and well above the $400 floor that would otherwise cancel the tax. The Social Security portion is $73,880 × 12.4% = $9,161.12 and the Medicare portion is $73,880 × 2.9% = $2,142.52, for a total self-employment tax of $11,303.64. That is about 14.13% of the original profit — noticeably below the headline 15.3% rate, because the 92.35% factor shaved the base first. Half of the tax, $5,651.82, comes straight back as an above-the-line deduction, and the tool suggests setting aside roughly $2,825.91 each quarter. Now scale the same single filer up to $250,000 of profit. Net earnings become $230,875, which blows past the Social Security wage base, so the Social Security portion freezes at $22,878 while Medicare keeps climbing to $6,695.38 — a $29,573.38 self-employment tax. Because net earnings now exceed the $200,000 single threshold, a separate $277.88 Additional Medicare Tax appears on Form 8959, and the deductible half rises to $14,786.69.
Definitions
- Net business profit
- Your self-employment income after deducting ordinary and necessary business expenses — the bottom line of Schedule C (line 31) or your share of partnership income. This is the figure you enter, not your gross receipts (0 to 2,000,000,000).
- Net earnings from self-employment
- Net profit multiplied by 92.35%. This is the amount the self-employment tax rates are actually applied to, and the number measured against the $400 filing floor and the Social Security wage base.
- 92.35% factor
- The share of profit that is taxable for SECA. The 7.65% it removes equals the employer half of FICA, so a sole proprietor is not taxed on money an employee would never have seen.
- Social Security wage base
- The annual ceiling on earnings subject to the 12.4% Social Security portion — $168,600 for 2024, $176,100 for 2025 and $184,500 for 2026. W-2 Social Security wages from a job count against this same ceiling first.
- Social Security portion (12.4%)
- The OASDI piece of self-employment tax, charged on net earnings up to the wage base. It combines the 6.2% employee and 6.2% employer rates that a salaried worker splits with their boss.
- Medicare portion (2.9%)
- The hospital-insurance piece, charged on every dollar of net earnings with no upper limit. It combines the 1.45% employee and 1.45% employer Medicare rates.
- One-half deduction
- An above-the-line income adjustment equal to exactly half of your Schedule SE tax. It lowers the income your federal income tax is figured on, but it does not shrink the self-employment tax bill itself.
- Additional Medicare Tax (0.9%)
- A surtax on net earnings above $200,000 (single or head of household), $250,000 (married filing jointly) or $125,000 (married filing separately), computed on Form 8959 and paid with your income tax rather than on Schedule SE.
Good to know
What self-employment tax really is
When you work for someone else, two payroll taxes leave the economy of your job almost invisibly. You see Social Security and Medicare deducted from your paycheck, and your employer quietly pays a matching amount you never notice on your pay stub. Together those contributions fund the same two federal programs, and together they come to 15.3% of your wages — 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare. Self-employment tax, sometimes called SECA after the Self-Employment Contributions Act, is simply how the law collects that identical 15.3% from people who are their own boss. The twist is that you are at once the employee and the employer, so both halves are yours to pay. This is not a penalty for choosing independence; it is the cost of building the very same Social Security earnings record and Medicare eligibility a salaried worker accumulates. Pay it for enough years and it funds your future retirement and disability benefits exactly as an employee's withholding does. Yet it routinely blindsides first-time freelancers, for two reasons. First, it is charged completely separately from income tax, on its own form, Schedule SE, with its own rules — so a freelancer who has carefully set aside money for their income-tax bracket can still be short by thousands. Second, it lands on your profit before a single income-tax bracket or deduction is applied, so even a modest-income sole proprietor in a low income-tax bracket still owes the full self-employment rate from the first dollars of profit. The cleanest mental model is to think of it as 'the FICA you now pay on your own behalf, both the worker's share and the boss's.' Hold on to that framing and every quirk that follows — the 92.35% adjustment, the wage cap, the half deduction — stops feeling arbitrary and starts to look like a deliberate effort to treat the self-employed neither better nor worse than employees.
The 92.35% adjustment, and why your rate is never quite 15.3%
The headline rate everyone quotes is 15.3%, but almost nobody actually pays that on their whole profit, and the reason is a small adjustment that quietly works in your favor. Before any rate is applied, your net business profit is multiplied by 92.35% to produce your net earnings from self-employment, and only that reduced figure is taxed. The 7.65% that vanishes is not arbitrary — it is precisely the employer half of payroll tax (6.2% Social Security plus 1.45% Medicare), which a salaried employee is never taxed on because their employer pays it with pre-tax dollars. By stripping it out first, the tax code keeps the self-employed on the same economic footing as employees, rather than charging them tax on money a worker would never have seen in the first place. The arithmetic effect is consistent: your effective self-employment tax rate on profit comes out to roughly 14.13% rather than 15.3% for earnings beneath the Social Security cap, because 15.3% multiplied by 0.9235 equals about 14.13%. On a $50,000 profit that gap is worth around $585; on a $150,000 profit it approaches $1,750. It is one of the few features of the system that reliably saves you money, which is exactly why the calculator surfaces an 'effective rate on profit' alongside the raw rates — so you can see that the number that actually matters to your wallet is lower than the figure people repeat. A side effect worth noting is that the 92.35% factor also governs the $400 filing floor and the wage-base comparison: every threshold in self-employment tax is measured against your net earnings after the adjustment, not against your raw profit. Keep that in mind whenever you are near a threshold, because the number the law cares about is always the smaller, adjusted one.
Two taxes wearing one coat: Social Security and Medicare
Self-employment tax presents itself as a single 15.3% figure, but it is really two distinct taxes bundled together, and they behave very differently as your income climbs — a difference that becomes the most important planning fact for a growing business. The Social Security portion is 12.4%, and it is capped. It applies only to net earnings up to that year's Social Security wage base, a ceiling that rises most years with average wages: it was $168,600 in 2024, $176,100 in 2025, and $184,500 in 2026. Once your net earnings cross that line, the Social Security piece simply stops — your next dollar of profit owes nothing further toward it, no matter how high you go. The Medicare portion is 2.9%, and it is the opposite: entirely uncapped, applying to every single dollar of net earnings with no upper limit at all. This asymmetry produces a counter-intuitive pattern in your marginal rate. A freelancer earning under the cap faces a 15.3% marginal self-employment tax on each additional dollar of profit. The moment they pass the wage base, that marginal rate collapses to just 2.9%, because only the Medicare slice keeps biting. Then, for very high earners, it ticks back up to 3.8% once the Additional Medicare Tax joins in. Seeing the two portions broken out on their own lines — as this calculator does — is not cosmetic; it tells you exactly where your money is going and when the cap has started working in your favor. It also reframes a common worry: people fear that more profit means an ever-rising payroll tax, when in reality the heaviest self-employment tax rate is felt by middle-income earners under the cap, and it eases considerably for those above it. Knowing which side of the wage base you sit on changes how you think about an extra project, a raise to yourself, or the timing of income between years.
The $400 floor and who has to file Schedule SE
Not every dollar of side income sets off self-employment tax, and the threshold that decides it is one of the most misunderstood numbers in the whole system. The law sets a floor: if your net earnings from self-employment — that is, your profit after the 92.35% factor — total less than $400 for the year, you owe no self-employment tax and generally are not required to file Schedule SE at all. Because the test is applied to net earnings rather than to raw profit, it actually takes about $433 of net business profit — $433.13, to be precise — to reach the $400 mark, since $433.13 multiplied by 0.9235 equals exactly $400. The floor exists for a sensible reason: it spares people with trivial hobby income or a one-off gig the burden of payroll-tax paperwork over a few dollars of tax. But here is the trap that catches people — it is a cliff, not a deduction. The instant your net earnings clear $400, the tax applies to the entire amount from the first dollar, not merely to the slice above the threshold. So someone with $390 of net earnings owes nothing, while someone with $410 owes self-employment tax on the whole $410, not just on the $10 of excess. If you are hovering near the edge — a weekend seller, a part-time consultant, someone testing a new venture — that cliff is worth watching, because a tiny increase in profit can switch on the full 15.3% obligation. It is also worth knowing that the $400 figure has been fixed for decades and is not indexed to inflation, so it captures more people in real terms every year. Schedule SE is the form where all of this is calculated, and its result does not stay there: it flows onto Schedule 2 and then into the total tax line of your Form 1040, sitting right alongside your income tax. The calculator applies the same floor automatically, zeroing the tax and flagging the result whenever your net earnings fall below it.
The half-deduction and what it's really worth
Built into the system is a genuine and frequently overlooked piece of relief: you can write off exactly one half of your self-employment tax above the line, which trims the income your federal tax is figured on before a single bracket applies. The logic, once more, traces back to the principle of treating the self-employed like employers. A business that hires staff gets to deduct the employer share of its workers' payroll taxes as a cost of doing business, so the law extends the equivalent courtesy to sole proprietors, letting them write off the boss's share they effectively just covered themselves. The most important thing to understand is precisely what this deduction does and does not do, because the distinction trips up even experienced filers. It reduces the income on which your federal income tax is calculated — it does not reduce the self-employment tax itself. Your Schedule SE bill is exactly the same whether or not you claim it; what changes is your income-tax base. That means its cash value is not a dollar-for-dollar refund but depends entirely on your income-tax bracket. At a 22% marginal rate, deducting $5,651 of self-employment tax lowers your income tax by roughly $1,243; at a 12% bracket the same deduction is worth only about $678; at 32% it is worth around $1,808. Two practical points follow. First, because it is an above-the-line adjustment, you claim it whether you take the standard deduction or itemize — you never have to give anything up to get it. Second, only the regular Schedule SE tax qualifies for the halving; the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax is excluded, so high earners do not get to deduct half of the surtax. The calculator lets you enter your marginal income-tax rate in the advanced options precisely so it can estimate this saving and show you the tax's true after-deduction cost, which is the number that actually leaves your pocket once the income-tax benefit is counted.
The 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax and Form 8959
Higher earners run into one more layer that lower-income filers never see, and it works differently enough from the rest of self-employment tax to deserve its own explanation. On top of the regular 2.9% Medicare portion, an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% applies to net earnings above a threshold set by your filing status: $200,000 (single or head of household), $250,000 (married filing jointly) or $125,000 (married filing separately). Three details routinely trip people up. The first is where it lives. Unlike the Social Security and Medicare portions, this surtax is not computed on Schedule SE — it is figured separately on Form 8959 and paid together with your income tax, which is why a thorough estimate keeps it on its own line rather than burying it in the headline self-employment tax. The second is that it does not qualify for the one-half deduction; only the Schedule SE tax can be halved, so the surtax is a full-cost addition with no offset. The third, and the most easily missed, is coordination with a job. If you also earn W-2 wages, those wages count toward the very same threshold, which effectively lowers the point at which your self-employment income begins owing the 0.9%. A married-filing-jointly taxpayer with $200,000 of W-2 wages, for example, has only $50,000 of their $250,000 threshold left before their self-employment earnings start attracting the surtax. There is also a quiet, long-run effect: these thresholds are written into statute as fixed dollar amounts and, unlike the Social Security wage base, are not adjusted for inflation. As wages and prices rise over the years, more and more taxpayers drift across the line into paying it — a slow widening of its reach that is easy to overlook. The calculator mirrors the real Form 8959 mechanics: it reduces your threshold by any W-2 Medicare wages you enter, applies the 0.9% only to the net earnings above what remains, and reports the result distinctly so you can see exactly how much of your bill comes from the surtax rather than the base tax.
Juggling a W-2 job and a side business
A great many people freelance on top of a regular job, and the interaction between the two is one of the most misunderstood corners of self-employment tax — get it wrong in one direction and you overpay, get it wrong in the other and you face a surprise bill. The key fact is that the Social Security wage base is a single annual ceiling spanning all of your earnings, not a fresh limit that resets for each source of income. Your employer has already withheld Social Security tax on your wages throughout the year, and under the law those wages consume the shared cap first. The practical consequence is striking: if your day job alone has already pushed your wages to or past the Social Security wage base, your self-employment income owes no Social Security portion whatsoever — the 12.4% piece is fully used up, and only the uncapped 2.9% Medicare keeps applying to your profit. Even when your job has not maxed the cap, it has eaten into it, leaving only the remaining room for your self-employment earnings to fill. Enter your W-2 Social Security wages in the advanced options and the calculator performs this coordination for you, charging the 12.4% only on whatever base is left rather than naively applying it to your full profit. Medicare, having no ceiling, behaves more simply: the 2.9% applies to all your net self-employment earnings regardless of your wages, and your W-2 Medicare wages instead feed into the Additional Medicare threshold as described earlier. Getting this interplay right genuinely matters in dollars. A moonlighter who ignores the shared Social Security cap can badly overestimate their bill — sometimes by thousands — and set aside far more than they owe. The opposite mistake, forgetting that a high salary plus side income can push total earnings past the Additional Medicare threshold, leaves people short at filing. Because the calculator handles both sides of the coordination from the wages you enter, it is worth taking the extra minute to fill in those advanced fields whenever you have income from both a job and a business.
Quarterly estimates and dodging the penalty
Employees have payroll tax and income tax withheld automatically from every paycheck, spread evenly across the year without a second thought. The self-employed enjoy no such automation, which means the responsibility to prepay falls squarely on you — and crucially, the IRS does not wait until April to collect. Self-employment tax, bundled together with your income tax, is meant to be paid in through quarterly estimated payments due at roughly mid-April, mid-June, mid-September, and mid-January of the following year. The deadlines are uneven and do not line up with calendar quarters, which surprises newcomers, but they are firm. Miss them, or pay too little along the way, and you can be charged an underpayment penalty even if you settle the entire balance when you file your return — the penalty is for paying late, not for paying short overall. Fortunately, the rules offer a clear shelter known as safe harbor. In general, you avoid the penalty if you pay in at least 90% of the current year's total tax, or 100% of the prior year's tax (110% if your adjusted gross income was above a higher-income threshold), whichever is easier to hit. Many self-employed people lean on the prior-year figure because it is a known, fixed number they can divide into four. This calculator splits your total estimated self-employment tax — including any Additional Medicare Tax — into four equal set-asides as a sensible starting point, but two cautions apply. First, what it shows is only the self-employment-tax slice — you must add your projected income tax to each payment to arrive at your full estimated payment, since both travel together on the same voucher. Second, four flat payments assume your income arrives evenly. If your earnings are lumpy — a big project in the autumn, say, or a seasonal business — the annualized-income installment method can match your payments to when you actually earn, often reducing or eliminating a penalty that flat quarters would have triggered. Revisit your numbers mid-year whenever your income shifts, and treat the quarterly figure here as a baseline to refine rather than a fixed prescription.
Legitimate ways to manage the bill
Self-employment tax is unavoidable on genuine self-employment profit, but the profit it is charged on is something you have real and lawful influence over, and a handful of honest levers are worth understanding before you accept the headline number. The most direct and underused is diligent expense tracking. Every ordinary and necessary business deduction lowers your net profit, and because self-employment tax sits on that profit, each legitimate deduction trims both your income tax and your 15.3% at the same time — a dollar deducted from a business expense works roughly twice as hard as a dollar that only reduces income tax. Home-office costs, mileage, equipment, software, professional fees, and a share of phone and internet are commonly missed; capturing them properly is the single most accessible way to shrink the base. Retirement saving is the next lever: contributions to a SEP-IRA or a solo 401(k) can shelter substantial sums from income tax and build your future security, though it is important to know they reduce income tax rather than the self-employment tax base itself, so they ease one of your two taxes, not both. For an established business with healthy, consistent profit, electing S-corporation status is the heavier-duty option. An S-corp pays you a salary that is subject to payroll tax, but the remaining profit distributed to you as a shareholder is not — potentially carving a meaningful slice out of the 15.3%. The catch is real: the IRS requires that your salary be reasonable for the work you actually do, and the election brings payroll filings, a separate return, added bookkeeping, and professional costs that can easily outweigh the savings until profits are comfortably into the six figures. None of these moves should be applied blindly. An unreasonably low S-corp salary or an aggressive deduction invites scrutiny and can cost far more than it saves. The sound approach is to treat the estimate this calculator produces as a planning baseline, keep clean and contemporaneous records, separate business and personal finances, and bring a qualified tax professional into the conversation before making any structural change. The figures here are estimates offered for general guidance and education — they are not legal or tax advice, and your own circumstances may shift the result.
Frequently asked questions
How is self-employment tax different from income tax?
They are two separate taxes that both land on the same profit. Self-employment tax is your Social Security and Medicare contribution — the equivalent of the FICA an employer and employee jointly pay on a salary — and it is a flat 15.3% on the first slice of earnings regardless of deductions or brackets. Income tax is charged on your taxable income through the graduated brackets. A profitable freelancer owes both, which is why a 22% income-tax bracket can feel more like 35% once self-employment tax is layered on. This calculator estimates only the self-employment tax half of that picture.
Why is the tax figured on 92.35% of my profit instead of all of it?
Because an employee never pays income or payroll tax on the employer's half of FICA, and the law keeps the self-employed on an even footing. Multiplying net profit by 92.35% strips out an amount equal to the employer-side 7.65% before the 15.3% rate is applied, so you are taxed on the same economic base a salaried worker would be. It is the single biggest reason your effective rate on profit comes out below 15.3% — about 14.1% for earnings under the wage cap.
Do I still owe self-employment tax if I also have a W-2 job?
Yes — a day job does not exempt your side income. But the two are coordinated so you are never overcharged. The Social Security wage base is a single annual ceiling shared across all your earnings, so wages your employer already taxed for Social Security use up the cap first; enter them in Advanced options and the calculator only charges the Social Security portion on whatever base is left. Medicare has no cap, so the 2.9% always applies to your full net earnings, and your W-2 Medicare wages are used to set the Additional Medicare threshold.
What is the one-half deduction actually worth?
It reduces the income your federal income tax is calculated on by half of your self-employment tax, but it does not lower the self-employment tax itself. Its cash value depends on your bracket: at a 22% marginal rate, a $5,651 deduction is worth about $1,243 in income-tax savings. Enter your marginal rate in Advanced options and the calculator shows that figure directly. It is an above-the-line adjustment, so you claim it whether or not you itemize.
When does the $400 threshold matter?
If your net earnings from self-employment — that is, profit after the 92.35% factor — come to less than $400 for the year, you owe no self-employment tax and generally do not file Schedule SE. The test is on net earnings, so it takes roughly $433 of net profit to reach the $400 mark. Above that line the tax applies from the first dollar, not just the amount over $400, which is why a small jump in profit can switch the tax on entirely.
Do I really have to pay this quarterly?
No tax is withheld from self-employment income, so the IRS expects you to prepay it through quarterly estimated payments due in April, June, September and January. Skipping them can trigger an underpayment penalty even if you settle up in full at filing. The calculator splits your total estimated self-employment tax — including any 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax — into four equal set-asides; remember to add your income tax to each one to arrive at your full estimated payment, and consider the safe-harbor rules if your income is uneven.
Can electing S-corporation status lower my self-employment tax?
It can, because only the wages an S-corp pays you are subject to Social Security and Medicare tax — the remaining profit distributed to you as a shareholder is not. The catch is that the IRS requires a reasonable salary for the work you do, and the strategy brings payroll filings, extra paperwork and costs that can outweigh the savings at lower profit levels. It is a genuine lever for established businesses but not a free lunch; model it carefully and get professional advice before electing.
Is the Social Security portion really capped while Medicare is not?
Yes. The 12.4% Social Security portion only applies to net earnings up to the year's wage base — $184,500 in 2026 — so once you cross it the Social Security piece stops growing entirely. The 2.9% Medicare portion has no ceiling and keeps applying to every additional dollar, and the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax stacks on top above your filing-status threshold. That is why very high earners watch their marginal self-employment tax rate fall from 15.3% to 2.9%, then rise to 3.8%, as their income climbs.