A 1099 contract rate is not your paycheck. Before you see a dollar of it, self-employment tax takes a bite that a W-2 employee never has to think about, and then federal and state income tax take their own cuts on top. This calculator walks gross 1099 income through all three layers — self-employment tax, federal tax, and state tax — using your own supplied federal and state rates, to give you an honest annual and monthly take-home number.
How it works
The calculator starts by subtracting your deductible business expenses from gross income to get net profit — the same figure that flows to Schedule C. That net profit runs through the same self-employment tax formula as the Self-Employment Tax Calculator: 92.35% of net profit taxed at 12.4% for Social Security (capped at the annual wage base) plus 2.9% for Medicare (uncapped). In a loss year — where business expenses exceed gross income — net profit is floored at $0, so no self-employment tax applies; your net take-home can still come out negative, since you're out the cash you spent, but the tax layers themselves compute to zero on a loss.
Then it applies a real Schedule 1 mechanic: half of that self-employment tax is deductible before federal and state income tax is calculated. So the taxable base for your federal and state rates is net profit minus half of self-employment tax, not net profit itself. Your federal rate and state rate — both numbers you supply — are applied to that taxable base to get federal tax and state tax. Total tax is self-employment tax plus federal tax plus state tax. Net take-home pay is gross income minus business expenses minus total tax, and monthly take-home is simply that annual figure divided by 12.
Worked example
Say you bill $90,000 in 1099 income for the year, with $10,000 in deductible business expenses, a 22% federal rate, and a 5% state rate.
- Net profit: $90,000 − $10,000 = $80,000
- Self-employment tax on that profit: $11,303.64
- Half of self-employment tax (deductible): $5,651.82
- Taxable base for income tax: $80,000 − $5,651.82 = $74,348.18
- Federal tax: 22% of $74,348.18 = $16,356.60
- State tax: 5% of $74,348.18 = $3,717.41
- Total tax: $11,303.64 + $16,356.60 + $3,717.41 = $31,377.65
- Net take-home pay: $90,000 − $10,000 − $31,377.65 = $48,622.35
- Effective tax rate: $31,377.65 ÷ $90,000 = 34.86%
- Monthly take-home: $48,622.35 ÷ 12 = $4,051.86
Of the $90,000 you billed, you keep about $48,622 after every layer of tax — a little over half, even though self-employment tax alone eats more than 12% of gross income before federal and state tax take their own cut.
How to interpret your result
Net take-home pay is the number to budget against — it's what actually lands in your account after self-employment tax and the income tax you told the calculator to apply. Monthly take-home is the same figure divided evenly across 12 months, useful for a household budget, but real 1099 income rarely arrives in even monthly installments, so treat it as a planning average rather than a cash-flow forecast.
Effective tax rate shows how much of your gross income disappears to tax overall — it's a summary number, not your marginal rate. Because it blends self-employment tax (which applies a flat structure to net profit) with your income tax rates (which you supplied as flat percentages too), the effective rate will generally sit below whatever your top federal bracket actually is.
This is a planning estimate, not a return. It does not compute federal or state tax brackets — it applies whatever flat rate you enter. It does not model the Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction, which can shelter up to 20% of qualified business income from federal tax for many 1099 filers, nor does it account for standard vs. itemized deductions, other credits, or state-specific rules like local income tax or state self-employment surtaxes. If your federal or state rate estimate is off, or if QBI applies to you, your real take-home pay will differ from this result.
Methodology & sources
Self-employment tax follows IRS Schedule SE mechanics: net profit (gross income minus business expenses) × 92.35% is the taxable base, taxed at 12.4% for Social Security (capped at the annual wage base) plus 2.9% for Medicare (uncapped) — the same formula used by this site's Self-Employment Tax Calculator. Half of that self-employment tax is then treated as deductible, per the "deduction for one-half of self-employment tax" on Schedule 1, before federal and state rates are applied to the remaining taxable base. Federal tax and state tax are each your supplied rate multiplied by that taxable base, rounded to the cent; total tax sums all three components, and take-home pay is gross income minus expenses minus total tax. See the IRS's Self-Employment Tax (Social Security and Medicare Taxes) page for the underlying self-employment tax rules and current-year Social Security wage base this calculator implements.
This tool covers US federal self-employment tax rules only, does not model income-tax brackets, the QBI deduction, or state-specific nuances beyond a flat rate you provide, and is not personalized tax advice — use it to sanity-check a rate or budget, and confirm with a tax professional or your own return before relying on the exact numbers.