Your salary is not your rate. You pay both halves of FICA, buy your own benefits, and do not get paid for the hours you are not billing.
Self-employment tax is 15.3% on 92.35% of net profit, with half of it deductible. Uses 2026 brackets and the $184,500 wage base.
Hourly rate to charge
$0
Day rate 8 hours
$0
Revenue needed per year
$0
Salary equivalent
$0
| Line item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Gross revenue needed | $0 |
| Business expenses | −$0 |
| Self-employment tax | −$0 |
| Federal income tax | −$0 |
| State income tax | −$0 |
| Left after tax | $0 |
| Health cover and retirement | −$0 |
| Spendable, matched to salary | $0 |
Three things stack up. A freelancer pays both halves of FICA through self-employment tax at 15.3%, where an employee only sees 7.65% taken out. A freelancer buys their own health cover, funds their own retirement and pays for their own equipment out of revenue. And a freelancer is not paid for holidays, sick days, or the hours spent finding and administering work, so billable hours are only a fraction of the hours actually worked.
It is 15.3% on net earnings: 12.4% Social Security plus 2.9% Medicare. It applies to 92.35% of net profit, and the Social Security portion stops at the annual wage base. Half of it is deductible above the line, which reduces income tax but not the tax itself. Employees effectively pay half this amount because the employer pays the other half.
Far fewer than 40 a week. After holidays, sick days, admin, invoicing and business development, a full-time freelancer typically bills somewhere between 20 and 30 hours a week. Using 40 billable hours with two weeks off badly understates the rate you need — which is why the billable hours field matters more than anything else on this page.
Project pricing usually earns more, because it rewards speed rather than time. This page still produces an hourly figure because it is the cleanest way to sanity-check a quote: price the project, divide by the hours you expect, and see whether the result clears the rate you need. If it does not, the project is not worth taking at that price.