🧾 Freelance & self-employment tax

Self-employment tax is the part that surprises people. As an employee you pay 7.65% toward Social Security and Medicare and your employer quietly pays the other half. Work for yourself and you pay both halves — 15.3% on 92.35% of your profit, up to the $184,500 Social Security wage base for 2026, with Medicare continuing above it. That is before a cent of income tax.

It also arrives on a different schedule. Nobody withholds anything for you, so the IRS expects payment four times a year, and expects it to be roughly right — miss the mark and there is an underpayment penalty charged at the federal short-term rate plus three points.

Filing prep path (tax year 2026 → season 2027)

When you are ready to organize — not e-file — follow: situation checklist → forms map → tools (estimator, quarterly, safe harbor, Form 2210, QBI). Terms live in the glossary; formulas on methodology. PiggyMath plans and sets aside — we do not e-file.

Where to start

If you are new to this, start with the all-in-one freelancer tax calculator — federal SE tax, income tax, state tax and QBI on one screen. Or work piece by piece: find out what the SE tax on your profit actually is, then work out what to send each quarter, then check the safe harbour figure — the minimum that makes you penalty-proof regardless of how the year turns out. That last one matters most if your income is unpredictable, because it lets you stop guessing. Want a simple transfer habit? Use the tax set-aside calculator or the how much to set aside guide; for the 20% §199A piece alone, open the QBI deduction calculator.

If you are deciding what to charge rather than what to pay, the rate calculator works backwards from the income you want to the rate that delivers it after tax, unpaid time and expenses. And if you are weighing a contract against a job offer, the 1099 versus W-2 comparison converts one into the other honestly — benefits, employer payroll tax and unpaid leave included.

Two things catch people out every year. The 1099-K threshold governs whether PayPal, Stripe or Etsy report your takings to the IRS — but receiving a form has never been what makes income taxable, and not receiving one has never made it invisible. And the deadlines are not evenly spaced: the second quarter payment is due in June, not July, which is the single most missed date in the calendar. Right now the live deadline is September 15, 2026 (Q3) — use it to catch up or trim while staying inside safe harbor.