SE tax plus the quarterly estimated payment schedule.
Covers: 1099, se tax, quarterly, estimated, self employed, schedule c.
Open the Self-Employment Tax tool →When you work for yourself you pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare, so the rate is the full 15.3% rather than the 7.65% an employee sees. We apply it to 92.35% of your net profit (the slice that excludes the employer-equivalent share), cap the 12.4% Social Security portion at the annual wage base, and add the 0.9% Additional Medicare surtax on earnings above your filing-status threshold.
Half is deductible above the line, so it lowers the income your income tax is figured on — half of the Social Security and Medicare parts only, because §164(f)(1) leaves the 0.9% surtax out of what it halves, exactly as Schedule SE does. Because no employer withholds for you, the IRS expects four roughly equal estimated payments across the year: we split your total into the 1040-ES quarters so you can see each one.
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