What your side gig really nets after expenses, platform fees and taxes
| Line | Monthly |
|---|
Gig apps and marketplace dashboards report your revenue — the big, motivating number. Your bank account experiences your profit — revenue minus platform fees, supplies, miles and the taxes nobody withholds for you. This calculator walks the full waterfall from gross to cash-in-pocket, then divides by your hours for the only metric that lets you compare a side hustle to literally anything else: your real hourly wage.
| Cost | Typical size | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Platform fees | Etsy ~9.5–13%, Uber/DoorDash ~25–30% effective, Upwork 10%, eBay ~13.6% | Include payment processing |
| Self-employment tax | 15.3% of ~92.35% of net profit | Both halves of Social Security & Medicare — no employer to split it |
| Income tax | Your marginal bracket | Side income stacks on top of your day-job salary, so it's taxed at your top rate |
| Vehicle wear | IRS rate $0.70/mile (2026) | Deductible — and a real cost, not just a tax trick |
| Supplies, shipping, software | Varies | All deductible business expenses |
Your W-2 job fills the lower tax brackets; every side-hustle dollar lands on top, at your marginal rate, plus 15.3% self-employment tax. A worker in the 22% bracket keeps roughly 66 cents of each marginal side-hustle dollar before expenses. That's not a reason to quit — it's the reason to price your goods and your time knowing the real margin, and to harvest every legitimate deduction (mileage, home office, supplies, phone share).
Count all the hours: making, driving, listing, messaging customers, packaging, bookkeeping. Divide true profit by true hours. Then compare honestly:
Yes — self-employment income is taxable from the first dollar, and SE tax kicks in at just $400 of annual net profit. Platforms report revenue to the IRS on 1099 forms, so unreported income is visible.
Ordinary and necessary business expenses: platform fees, supplies, shipping, software, business miles at the IRS rate, a home-office share, phone/internet share. Deductions reduce both income tax and SE tax, so tracking them pays double.
Four payments a year (April, June, September, January) via IRS Direct Pay covering your expected liability. The safe harbor: pay 100% of last year's total tax (110% if high-income) and you can't be penalized. This tool's monthly set-aside figure funds them.
An LLC changes liability, not taxes — a single-member LLC is taxed identically to a sole proprietor. Consider one when contracts, liability exposure or clients demand it; consider S-corp election only when profits comfortably exceed ~$60–80k/yr.
The stack: platform fees off the top, expenses, then ~30–40% of what's left to taxes, divided by more hours than you remember working. Seeing the waterfall is the point — it shows exactly which line to attack.
Yes — every figure computes locally in your browser and is never uploaded.
Yes — enter your business miles and it applies the IRS standard rate as a deduction. For delivery drivers, mileage is usually the largest deduction by far; track it with an app from day one.
A side hustle you've never run through this waterfall isn't a business — it's a guess with inventory. Two minutes here tells you whether to raise prices, cut the platform's share, harvest more deductions, or gracefully call it a hobby and enjoy it as one.