Our 1099 taxes calculator is the best way to estimate how much you'll owe on your self-employment income. Find out how much you should set aside!
Sarah is a staff writer at Keeper Tax and has her Enrolled Agent license with the IRS. Her work has been featured in Business Insider, Money Under 30, Best Life, GOBankingRates, and Shopify. She has nearly a decade of public accounting experience, and has worked with clients in a wide range of industries, including oil and gas, manufacturing, real estate, wholesale and retail, finance, and ecommerce. Sarah has extensive experience offering strategic tax planning at the state and federal level. During her time in industry, she handled tax returns for C Corps, S corps, partnerships, nonprofits, and sole proprietorships. Sarah is a member of the National A-sociation of Enrolled Agents (NAEA) and maintains her continuing education requirements by completing over 30 hours of tax training every year. In her spare time, she is a devoted cat mom and enjoys hiking, baking, and overwatering her houseplants.
After all, isn't that why you're using this calculator? You — and thousands of taxpayers like you — are learning how to navigate 1099 taxes. And that starts with figuring out how much self-employment tax you have to pay.
As a 1099 earner, you’ll have to deal with self-employment tax, which is basically just how you pay FICA taxes. The combined tax rate is 15.3%. Normally, the 15.3% rate is split half-and-half between employers and employees. But since independent contractors don’t have separate employers, they’re on the hook for the full amount. If you’d like more details on why things work this way, check out our beginner’s guide to self-employment tax.
But for now, think of self-employment tax as those double-pop popsicles. It can be split between two people, but it comes in a single package. There’s no way to avoid paying for both sticks even if it’s just you.
If you think you might owe more than $1,000 in federal income taxes, you should be making payments throughout the year — not just when you file your return. These additional payments are referred to as “quarterly” or “estimated” tax payments. You pay your quarterly taxes on the 15th day following the end of the quarter. For example, let’s say you expect to owe $2,000 in taxes. You would divide that amount by four and make your quarterly tax payments on the following schedule: