Set the tax money aside first. Then price the hour so the set-aside is possible.
A paycheck job withholds tax on the way through. A freelance deposit does not. The two tools that matter are the 1099 tax estimator and the hourly rate calculator. The invoice and the proposal are how you collect the number you decided on. They do not know if the number is enough.
Take $80,000 of receipts and $12,000 of ordinary expenses, single, no W-2 wages, with the qualified business income deduction applied the simple way. Profit is $68,000. Self-employment tax is about $9,608. Federal income tax after the 2026 standard deduction and that QBI deduction is about $4,273. Together, about $13,881, or about $3,470 a quarter.
That is about 20% of profit and about 17% of the money that hit the bank. Moving 25% of each deposit into a separate account overshoots this example a little, which is the point while expenses and the last quarter are still guesses. Rerun the estimator on year-to-date profit once a month and correct the transfer. The rules underneath it are the IRS self-employment tax page (12.4% plus 2.9% on 92.35% of net earnings), the 2026 brackets in Revenue Procedure 2025-32, and the QBI overview at IRS.gov. Quarterly timing and the underpayment rules are in Publication 505. This site does not file the voucher.
The Social Security wage base in the tool is $184,500, the 2026 figure. Social Security’s table lists $192,300 for 2027. Do not use this page unchanged for a 2027 plan. State tax is missing entirely. In Pennsylvania add 3.07% of profit, and check the local net-profits tax. The Pennsylvania guide is about the W-2 version of the same state.
The rate calculator works backward from the money you want to keep. Want $5,000 a month in pocket, $400 of software and insurance, and a $300 buffer, and you type a 30% tax buffer. Revenue needed is about $8,143 a month. Forty hours a week, four vacation weeks, and 30% of the rest unpaid, is about 112 billable hours. The floor is about $73 an hour. The page’s recommended rate adds 25%, about $91, so a negotiation does not drop you under the floor.
The 30% buffer is not the tax estimator. If the estimator says you owe about 20% of profit, a 30% buffer prices you higher than the tax bill requires. Use the higher number for the quote and the lower number for the quarterly payment. Mixing them is how people either undercharge or overpay the IRS.
If clients will not pay $91, the levers are hours you can bill and costs you can cut, not a braver subject line. The cold email drafts are templates. A commercial email still has to follow the CAN-SPAM rule: an honest subject, a real identity, a postal address, and a way to opt out.
The proposal and the invoice do quantity times rate, then tax. A $2,400 proposal at 6% tax is $2,544, and a 40% deposit is about $1,018. Ask for a deposit that covers what you cannot get back. Printing to PDF does not file anything. The IRS recordkeeping page is the habit: keep the accepted proposal, the invoice, and the deposit. The tools forget the tab when you close it.
Last updated: October 29, 2026. Estimates only. Not tax, legal, financial, or professional advice. See the terms.