Self-Employment Tax Calculator 2026
Estimate 2026 self-employment tax on your freelance or gig profit: 12.4% Social Security and 2.9% Medicare apply to 92.35% of net earnings, with the $184,500 wage base, W-2 wage coordination, the 0.9% additional surtax, and the deductible half of SE tax — every figure verified against the IRS 2026 inflation-adjustment release and the 2026 Form 1040-ES.
Works offline — your inputs never leave this device. How that works
Verified 2026-07-31 against IRS newsroom — tax year 2026 inflation adjustments (Rev. Proc. 2025-32); brackets/QBI cross-checked in Rev. Proc. 2025-32 and the 2026 Form 1040-ES (effective 2026-01-01)
Estimate only — not legal, tax, or financial advice. Only IRS can determine your actual amounts.
Official source: IRS — tax year 2026 inflation adjustments (Rev. Proc. 2025-32) ↗
🎓 Understand this tool
What it is
An estimate of the Social Security and hospital-insurance taxes that apply to freelance, contractor, and gig profit — the self-employed counterpart of the FICA taxes an employer normally splits with an employee, computed here for the 2026 tax year.
How it works
It follows the Schedule SE method from the verified 2026 pack: profit × 92.35% gives net earnings; 12.4% Social Security applies up to the $184,500 wage base (reduced by W-2 wages already taxed); 2.9% applies to all net earnings; and a 0.9% surtax applies above the filing-status threshold, coordinated with W-2 income per IRS Topic 560.
Getting the most from it
- Enter net profit — platform income minus business expenses, not gross payouts.
- Add any W-2 wages for the year so the wage base and surtax thresholds coordinate.
- Pick a filing status; the surtax threshold depends on it.
- Open the math panel to see each component computed line by line with its rate.
Reading your result
The headline figure is the whole 15.3%-family tax on the profit entered. Half of the base amount is itself deductible from income — the result lists that deduction because it feeds the income-tax side of a quarterly estimate, not because it reduces SE tax.
What it can't tell you
It cannot see church-employee income, farm optional methods, or multi-business netting, and it never determines what a return must show — the Schedule SE instructions and only an actual filing settle the final figure. Estimates here are educational.
Frequently asked questions
The combined rate is 15.3% — 12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% for hospital insurance — applied to 92.35% of net self-employment profit. The Social Security part stops at the $184,500 wage base for 2026, and a 0.9% additional surtax applies above $200,000 for single filers. This calculator estimates all three pieces.
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