Tax set-aside calculator for freelancers

Decide the savings rhythm once, not on every project.

Nobody withholds tax from your invoices, so the cash has to be parked deliberately. The freelancers who sail through April are the ones who moved the tax share somewhere boring months earlier.

Tell this calculator your estimated annual tax and when you are starting, and it spreads the saving across the months left before the April 15 deadline.

The bucket is the whole trick

The mechanics that actually keep freelancers out of April trouble are embarrassingly simple: open a separate savings account, move a fixed amount out of your current account on a schedule, and treat that money as already spent. The hard part is not the maths — it is never letting the balance feel like available cash.

This calculator turns your estimated annual tax into a per-month (or per-week) number, so the decision is made once instead of re-litigated on every project.

Why a separate account matters

A tax "set-aside" that lives in your checking account is not a set-aside. It is money you will spend, because it looks like money you can spend. The single highest-leverage habit for freelance tax survival is moving the tax share to an account you do not check. Many freelancers use a high-yield savings account so the balance at least earns a little while it waits.

How big the share should be

A common starting point is 25%–30% of every freelance payment, which covers combined self-employment and federal income tax at moderate incomes. Use your effective tax rate plus your state rate as the precise target. Above roughly $150,000 of profit you will want more; with large deductions, a retirement contribution, or a spouse with W-2 withholding, you may need less.

The point of this tool is not the percentage but the rhythm. Saving a smaller amount reliably every month beats saving a large amount whenever you remember, because the reliable version is what survives a slow month.

Timing versus the IRS due dates

Estimated tax is officially due in four uneven instalments (April 15, June 15, September 15, January 15). The bucket approach decouples from those dates: you save steadily, then pay from the bucket when each due date arrives. That way a lumpy income month does not blow the payment, because the money was already parked.

If your income is genuinely unpredictable, the quarterly tax calculator explains the annualised income method that lets you match instalments to when money actually arrived — useful when a single project dominates the year.