Self-employment income cut off

[Valdezamya]

Hello, you’ve probably been asked this before, but what is the amount you can earn in self-employment quarterly before needing to file pre-taxes? 

[AmyCPA]

Thank you for the question, @Valdezamya!

I'm going to give you a few different answers:

Filing taxes.  You will need to file a return if you have $600 or more in gross income from self-employment.  That's a pretty small threshold.  Though you may end up not owing taxes on an amount that small, you are still required to file.

Making estimated tax payments.  While you never HAVE to make estimated tax payments, you may run into penalties if you do not make them.  If you owe less than $1,000 on tax day (without estimated tax payments), then you will not owe a penalty.  So if your self-employment is a side job, your spouse has adequate without, or your qualify for child/income related credits, you may not end up needing to make any quarterly payments.  However, if you owe more than that $1,000 on tax day, you may be hit with those underpayment penalties for not sending in your taxes when the income is earned.

Depending on how much money you make overall on your return, your self-employment (net) earnings will be subject to self-employment taxes of 15.3% (that's for social security & medicare as both an employer and employee).  You will have to pay this tax even if your overall taxable income is 0.  Think about it as you had social security and medicare withheld a regular wage job which does not come back to you - same concept.

Now, how much should you send in?  Turbo Tax will actually calculate your estimated tax payments based on your prior year income.  This is one of the "safe harbors" that we are allowed in order to avoid the underpayment penalty.  Absent of vouchers, you should send in at least that 15.3% of your net income quarterly as well as 10-35% for regular taxes.  That can really add up, so I highly advise you to use the payment vouchers from TurboTax if your income is either about the same as the prior year or going up.  If, however, your income has dropped off from the prior year, your payments may also be reduced.

Thanks again for the question!

[RSUMan]

The major issue I see at tax time is self-employed individuals do not understand that there is a Self-Employment Tax.

This tax is 15.3% on the profit of your SE business.

The tax is equal to what a W-2 employee and his employer pays into Social Security and Medicare.

So taxpayer drives for rideshare has $30,000 revenue and $10,000 expenses.

Profit is $20,000.

Taxpayer is married so Standard Deduction is $25,900 and spouse does not have income.

No Income Tax is owed.

However, $3,060 in Self-Employment Tax is owed.

Because of the potential for this negative surprise, I would not think in terms of a minimum income where you do not have to think about taxes.

If you have $400 or more in net earnings from self-employment, IRS requires you to file a tax return.