Set Aside was inspired by Dave Ramsey's advice to put aside 25% to 30% of your freelance earnings to account for self-employed taxes and to be prepared ahead of time if you end up owing money to the IRS.
Remember, the self-employment tax is in addition to your regular income tax rate. That’s why Dave recommends you save as you go by setting aside around 25–30% of every freelance check you receive in a separate savings account to cover your income and self-employment taxes so you don’t come up short at tax time.
- Dave Ramsey, "Freelance Tax 101"
It's a simple calculator to determine taxable income. You enter your gross income and select a tax rate, then your taxable income and net income are displayed below.
Typically, after I send the final invoice for a project and actually get the money, I google 30% of whatever my gross income was, then subtracted the taxable income from my gross income with a calculator on my phone. This became pretty inconvenient since I'm immediately transferring funds from the payment into a savings account solely for my self-employed taxes, so I created Set Aside to clearly and concisely display the information I cared about: taxable income and net income.
These are the amounts Dave Ramsey recommends to set aside, so they are the only options offered. I follow his teachings strictly (almost... religiously, one could say), so I won't be offering any other percentages or updating the app to include a number input for custom percentages.
This app was created with Create-React-App.