Quarterly Estimated Tax Calculator
United States federal tax · tax year 2026 · self-employed and 1099 income
How much are quarterly estimated taxes on $60,000 of self-employment profit in 2026?
A single filer expecting $60,000 of net self-employment profit in 2026, with no other income, owes $12,037 of US federal tax — $8,478 self-employment tax plus $3,559 income tax. The lowest legal payment under the 90% safe harbour is $2,708 per quarter, due April 15, 2026, June 15, 2026, September 15, 2026 and January 15, 2027.
Enter what you expect to make this year and see the four Form 1040-ES payments: self-employment tax, income tax, the QBI deduction, and the smallest quarterly payment the law lets you make. Free, no account, nothing saved — the arithmetic runs in your browser.
Your 2026 numbers
Self-employment tax is worked out one person at a time. On a joint return this calculator treats the W-2 job as your spouse's, so it does not use up your own Social Security wage base. Tick the box when the wages are your own, or the 12.4% Social Security part is charged a second time.
Health, law, accounting, consulting, athletics, financial services, performing arts and anything else whose main asset is the skill or reputation of its people. It only changes the answer at higher incomes.
Profit, not revenue: everything you expect to bill in 2026 minus your business expenses — Schedule C line 31. A loss is fine, type it with a minus sign.
The 2025 figures are on last year's Form 1040: AGI is line 11, total tax is line 24. Leave both empty if 2026 is your first year of self-employment — the prior-year safe harbour is not open to you.
What you owe for 2026
Where the tax comes from
| Line | Amount |
|---|---|
| Self-employment tax (Schedule SE) | — |
| Federal income tax (Form 1040) | — |
| Additional Medicare tax (Form 8959) | — |
| Total federal tax for 2026 | — |
| Qualified business income deduction (§199A) already applied above | — |
The three safe-harbour tests
| Test | Amount | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| 90% of your 2026 tax | — | — |
| 100% of your 2025 tax | — | — |
| 110% of your 2025 tax | — | — |
| Required for 2026 (the lower one) | — | |
| Less tax already withheld | — | |
| Each of the four payments | — |
The four 2026 due dates
| Payment | Income earned | Due | Amount |
|---|
These are the dates printed on Form 1040-ES (2026), after the weekend and legal-holiday rule. Nothing moves this year: April 15 is a Wednesday and the District of Columbia's Emancipation Day falls on Thursday April 16. Pay through IRS Direct Pay or EFTPS.
This is a calculator, not tax advice. It covers United States federal tax only — your state very likely wants estimated payments of its own.
Already missed one? — the underpayment penalty calculator prices a late or missing instalment to the cent, and shows what each further day adds.
Thinking about an S corp? — the S-corp breakeven calculator shows the profit at which the election starts to pay for itself, once payroll and the extra return are paid for.
This page divides one annual figure by four. The Self-Employed Tax Engine works the way the IRS actually lets you pay.
- Form 2210 Schedule AI annualisation: four periods with the income you really earned in each, so a project that lands in August is not billed to you in April.
- A payment calendar that records what you actually paid and re-cuts the instalments still to come, carrying over- and underpayments between periods.
- The prorated social security wage base for each period, per-period deductions, W-2 wages and UBIA, and every Form 1040, Schedule SE, 8995-A and 8959 line laid out.
- Thirty constants, each with the IRS or SSA document it was read from, and 210 assertions cross-checked against an independent open-source tax model.
Every constant used here — the brackets, the wage base, the section 199A thresholds, the safe-harbour percentages — is published as an open dataset, with the document each one was read from.
See the open dataset →How this calculator works
It follows Form 1040 in order. Your Schedule C profit goes to Schedule SE, which takes 92.35% of it and charges 12.4% social security up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500 plus 2.9% Medicare with no ceiling at all. Half of that self-employment tax then comes off your income as an adjustment. What is left, less the standard deduction for your filing status, is taxable income before the qualified business income deduction; section 199A takes 20% of your business income, capped by 20% of taxable income, with the phase-outs that begin at $201,750 (or $403,500 filing jointly) and the new $400 minimum where it applies. The remainder is taxed with the 2026 rate schedules from Revenue Procedure 2025-32, and Form 8959 adds 0.9% on earnings above the Additional Medicare threshold.
Every line is rounded to a whole dollar exactly where the IRS rounds it, so the figures match what you would write on the forms. The same arithmetic is checked to the dollar against the tax model behind our paid workbook: thirty constants read out of IRS and SSA documents, and hundreds of assertions cross-checked against an independent open-source model. Nothing you type is stored, sent anywhere, or remembered once you close the tab.
What this page deliberately does not do
A short web form has to assume things, and it is better to say which:
- It assumes the standard deduction, one business, no employees, no qualified property and no capital gains or qualified dividends. Itemising, a rental, a partnership K-1 or a big brokerage year all move the answer.
- It splits the year into four equal payments. If your income is lumpy, the annualised income instalment method on Form 2210 Schedule AI will legally let you pay very little in April and more in September — that is the workbook, not this page.
- It is federal only. Most states run their own estimated tax on their own dates, and a few cities do as well.
- It plans; it does not track. Once you start paying, what matters is what you actually sent and when, and this page has no memory of that by design.
Frequently asked questions
How much should a freelancer set aside for taxes?
Run your own figures above — the honest answer turns on your filing status and on whether anyone in the household has a W-2 job. A single filer with no other income pays roughly 20 cents on the dollar on a first $60,000 of profit, and it climbs from there. The old “save 30%” rule is a sensible buffer for many people and a real overpayment for others; the percentage in the box above is yours.
What happens if I miss a quarterly payment?
The IRS charges interest on the shortfall for every day it is late, worked out on Form 2210. It is not a flat fine and it is not a catastrophe, but it is not waived just because you settle up in April either. Pay late rather than not at all — the meter stops the day the money arrives.
Do I have to pay quarterly at all?
Not if your 2026 tax after withholding comes to less than $1,000, and not if you had no tax liability at all for a full twelve-month 2025. Otherwise yes. If you also hold a W-2 job, raising the withholding there is a genuine alternative: the IRS treats withheld tax as paid evenly across the year, whenever it was actually taken.
Is the 110% rule based on my 2025 or my 2026 income?
Your 2025 AGI decides which prior-year percentage you get; your 2026 filing status decides which line it is measured against — over $150,000, or over $75,000 if you file 2026 as married filing separately. That second line catches people who are nowhere near being high earners.
Does this calculator store my numbers?
No. Everything runs in your browser. Nothing is sent to us, saved or shared — reload the page and it is gone.
