how do self employed pay taxes
When figuring self-employment tax you owe, you get to reduce self-employment income by half of the self-employment tax before applying the tax rate. Say, for example, that your net self-employment income is $50,000. That's the amount you report as taxable for income tax purposes on Form 1040. But when figuring your self-employment tax on Schedule SE, Computation of Social Security Self-Employment Tax, the taxable amount is $46,175. Not paying the 15.3 percent tax on $3,225 difference in this example saves you $493.