Tax Guides
Plain-language tax guides written for freelancers, self-employed professionals, and small business owners. Each guide cites its own official IRS sources directly in a per-page source table, so you can verify the numbers yourself.
These guides exist because tax rules are harder to navigate than they should be. The IRS publishes technically complete material, but it is written for tax professionals and legal compliance, not for someone trying to figure out how much to send in with their 1040-ES or whether they qualify for the home office deduction. Every published guide on this page translates one topic into numbered steps, shows a worked example with realistic dollar amounts, and links to a free calculator that lets you plug in your own figures.
What you will find in each guide
Each published guide follows the same structure: a quick summary of the rule, the current rate or threshold for 2026, who it applies to, how to calculate it, a worked example, common mistakes, and links to related tools. Where the IRS uses specific terminology, we use the same terms, but we also explain them in plain language the first time they appear. We never bury the actual number you came to find.
How we keep these guides current
When new IRS Revenue Procedures, Notices, or forms are released, we update our tax dataset and flag the affected guides for review. Each published guide displays a last-reviewed date and a per-page source table showing exactly which IRS document supports each data point. If you spot a number that looks wrong or out of date, please let us know.
Available tax guides
Federal Income Tax Brackets 2026
All 7 rates, standard deduction, and marginal vs effective rate.
Which guide answers which question
If you have just started working for yourself, read the self-employment tax guide first. It explains the 15.3% that replaces the FICA an employer would normally split with you, why it applies to 92.35% of your net earnings rather than all of them, and how the Social Security wage base caps part of it. Once that figure makes sense, the quarterly estimated tax guide covers what the IRS expects during the year: the four due dates, the safe-harbor rules, the $1,000 threshold below which no payment is required, and what to do if you miss a quarter.
For the amounts themselves, the federal bracket guide lists all seven 2026 rates and explains the difference between your marginal and effective rate, and the standard deduction guide gives the figures by filing status along with the age-65 addition and the point where itemizing starts to make sense.
Two guides cover deductions people most often miss. The home office deduction guide walks through the IRS Simplified Method at $5 per square foot up to 300 square feet, including the regular-and-exclusive-use test that decides whether you qualify. The self-employment tax deduction guide covers deducting half your SE tax above the line, which reduces your adjusted gross income whether or not you itemize.
If you sell through a marketplace or take payments through an app, the 1099-K threshold guide explains the return to $20,000 plus 200 transactions, why several states set lower thresholds, and the point that catches people out: the form is a report, not a tax bill, and your income is taxable whether or not one arrives.
How these guides stay current
Federal figures change every year, and some change mid-year. Each guide carries the date it was last reviewed and a source table naming the exact IRS document behind each number, so you can check any figure at its origin rather than taking ours. When the IRS publishes updated parameters, the underlying dataset is versioned and the affected guides are flagged for review. Material corrections are logged with dates on the validation page rather than changed quietly.