us_freelance_vs_employee

tools.xearno/calculators · Verify this server

The 1099 rate that truly replaces a W-2 salary — solved from taxes, benefits, and billable reality, not a folk multiplier. Rules of thumb ("charge 1.5× your salary hourly") hide what actually changes when you go independent: you pay both halves of Social Security and Medicare, buy the whole health premium instead of the employee share, self-fund the 401(k) match, and bill far fewer hours than you work. One thing runs the other way — the §199A QBI deduction (made permanent in 2025) shelters about 20% of profit from income tax, and models routinely forget it. This tool solves for the 1099 gross at which your net-of-everything genuinely matches the W-2 job, then divides by the hours that realistically bill. All 2026 parameters verified on IRS primary sources; benefit defaults from the KFF 2025 employer survey.