eddie wharton

Freelance Project Tax Calculator - Calculate taxes and take-home pay for your freelance work

The Freelance Project Tax Calculator helps freelancers figure out what they should charge, what their tax burden is on a project, and what they get to take home.

Now freelancers can built taxes into their pricing and avoid unpleasant quarterly surprises.

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Emilie Burke

Obviously, anything made in spreadsheets has a lot of room for UI improvement, but those struggles are all meaningless when you recognize the value of this calculator. As a freelancer, it's always unclear how much money you're actually taking home from a project and making sure you're not underpricing yourself. This is something that gets better over time as a freelancer, but in the mean time he/she is leaving money on the table, underpricing themselves, or, worst case scenario, losing money on projects. I'm super impressed by the ease of use and value of information.

Pros:

Super easy to use

Cons:

The UI has room for improvement

Mike Wilner
Thanks so much Emilie!
Taylor Sloane
When I did freelance back in the day, my #1 complaint was not knowing exactly how much money I was making from each job. Taxes made my life hell. This would have given me some much needed transparency into the billing process. 🎉
Mike Wilner
@jakeapeters Thanks Jake! We hear "this was such a PITA back when I freelanced" a lot. Hopefully we can make that easier for people that are dipping their toes in the water today.
Mike Wilner
Hey everyone! Super excited to be launching this calculator on Product Hunt. I've been helping freelancers for the past few years. One of the biggest things freelancers struggle with when starting out is understanding what they should be setting aside for taxes, and how that affects their pricing and margins. With this calculator, you can: - calculate tax withholding on your project - account for common freelance project costs - adjust the inputs to figure out what you should be charging in order to take home what you want It handles supplemental w2 income, self-employment taxes, federal income taxes, and state/local taxes everywhere in the US. We hope this gives freelancers more peace of mind, and allows them to freelance more profitably! Looking forward to your feedback!
Stuart Balcombe
Really excited to be launching the calculator on PH today. Over the past 6 months (and multiple years as freelancers ourselves), we've been digging into some of the biggest challenges that freelancers face when running their businesses and the one question that keeps coming to a head is "How do I handle taxes?". We've heard people say things like: - "(Taxes) is absolutely the biggest pain for me personally. At least the most stressful since no matter how much research you do you never know you got it right." - “I am PUMPED for that one (tax withholding) bc I hate taxes. who doesn’t…” The calculator helps provide insights and transparency into what freelancers are actually able to take home on a project by project basis.
Jon Salm
This would have been SUPER useful for me around 5 years ago...I freelanced for a startup when I was in college/right out of school and had zero idea what I was doing in terms of taxes. I'd take on a few extra projects around tax time and use that income to pay off my tax bill. That worked out ok, but having a tool like this would have made my life a lot easier.
Mike Wilner
@jon_salm it's especially important when you have w2 income as well. Your marginal tax rate on freelance income is a lot higher.
Jayna Lee Feeley Fey

The folks at Sail are doing great things for freelancers - pay attention to them!

Pros:

This is a huge value to freelancers, helping with a very stressful problem in a time saving way

Cons:

It's a google sheet - obviously it's not perfect and doesn't have beautiful UI, but it does its job and does it well

Mike Wilner
Thanks, Jayna! You know I'm better at function than form :)
eddie wharton
A useful tool to see how much a project will net a freelancer after taxes. Can help figure out if you should take on the project and how much taxes to set aside
Darian Rosebrook

This tool is super valuable. For being one of the first early stages of this product, you can get a lot out of it.

The breakdown is nice and it's been good to check this out and see a decent implimentation of this kind of calculator.

I'm looking forward to seeing how far this can be explored and developed.

Pros:

The tool really simple

Highly detailed breakdown of taxes

Does calculations for you based on locale

File type allows you to save for later

Cons:

Even though it's early stage, would be nice to have an online tool or app

UI could be improved a bit

Sadly these can only be estimated taxes

Max Kilb
As someone who freelances on the side, I didn't really consider the cost of taxes when setting my rates outside of knowing roughly what my marginal tax rate would look like, plus the other taxes on top of it. Looking forward to using this to be conscious of this and help me set better pricing!
Connor Cirillo
this was such a PITA when I was getting my feet wet in freelancing. finances for mere mortals like me :)
Mike Wilner
@connorcirillo it's especially important for folks who are just getting their feet wet. Taking on a small moonlight project on top of w2 income means that a pretty large chunk needs to be set aside for taxes.
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