Know exactly what tax your business pays
Free calculators for freelancers and companies in 13 countries. Real legal forms, official rates, a transparent breakdown.
Guides & insights
All 50 articles →In-depth guides on freelance and company tax across 13 countries. Every article is written from official sources, with the real rates, a worked example and the numbers you actually need.
US Federal Tax Brackets 2026 Explained: Marginal vs Effective Rate
Moving into a higher tax bracket never taxes all of your income at that rate: here are the complete 2026 federal brackets for every filing status, the standard deduction amounts, and the exact arithmetic that turns a 22% marginal rate into a 12.71% effective one.
Your First Year as a UK Limited Company: Every Tax and Deadline
A complete first year map for a new UK limited company, from the split corporation tax period and Companies House deadlines to PAYE, VAT registration and your first self assessment.
UK Dividend Tax Explained for Company Directors (2026/27)
A practitioner's guide to how UK dividend tax actually works for owner-directors, including the April 2026 rate rise and how to plan distributions across tax years.
UK Contractor Day Rates: What You Really Take Home
A practitioner's guide to converting a UK contractor day rate into realistic annual revenue and actual take-home pay in 2026/27, inside and outside IR35.
LLC vs Sole Proprietor: What Actually Changes for Your Taxes
Forming a single-member LLC does not lower your federal tax bill by a single dollar, and here are the 2026 numbers that prove it, plus the profit level where an S-corp election actually starts to pay for itself.
USC and PRSI explained for the Irish self-employed
USC and PRSI are two separate charges that sit on top of Irish income tax, and between them they turn a 40% headline rate into a marginal burden of over 52% for the self-employed.
Sole trader vs limited company in Ireland: which pays less tax
Comparing 52.35% to 12.5% is the wrong comparison: what decides the Irish incorporation question is how much profit you can leave in the company and what you do with it.Find your tax calculator
Search or filter across 34 calculators in 13 countries. Every result opens a full, transparent breakdown with official sources.
No calculators match your search.
How business tax works, country by country
Working out how much tax you actually pay as a freelancer, sole trader or small company is rarely simple. The rate on paper is only the starting point. What lands in your pocket depends on your legal form, your country, your social-security contributions, the deductions you can claim, and even whether you are in your first year of activity. BizTaxCalc exists to turn that tangle into a clear, step-by-step number you can trust, for 13 countries and their real tax regimes.
Self-employed vs company: two different tax worlds
Most tax systems treat the self-employed and companies very differently. As a self-employed worker (a sole trader in the UK and Ireland, an autónomo in Spain, a micro-entrepreneur in France, a forfettario or ordinario in Italy, a Freiberufler in Germany), your business profit is usually taxed as personal income. That means progressive income-tax brackets, plus social-security contributions that fund your pension and healthcare. In several countries a simplified or flat-rate scheme lets you swap real bookkeeping for a fixed coefficient or a percentage of turnover, which can dramatically lower both the paperwork and the tax bill.
A company (an SRL in Italy or Belgium, a Ltd in the UK and Ireland, a GmbH in Germany and Switzerland, an LLC or C-corp in the United States, a BV in the Netherlands) is a separate taxpayer. It pays corporate income tax on its profit, and when it distributes what is left to you as dividends, that distribution is often taxed a second time. Incorporating can save tax at higher profit levels, but it adds cost and complexity, and the real saving depends heavily on how you pay yourself. Our LLC vs S-corp vs C-corp guide and sole trader vs limited company comparison walk through exactly when the switch pays off.
Flat-rate and simplified regimes
One of the biggest levers for a small business is the special regime. Italy's forfettario applies a single substitute tax of 5% (for the first five years) or 15% to a profit figure derived from your revenue and an ATECO profitability coefficient. France's micro-entrepreneur regime charges social contributions as a straight percentage of turnover. Portugal's regime simplificado uses coefficients much like Italy's. These schemes trade deductions for simplicity and low rates, which is why they are so popular, and why the effective rate they produce can be far below the headline income-tax scale.
Why the effective rate is what matters
Two freelancers earning the same amount in two countries can keep wildly different sums. At a €50,000 income level, an effective tax-and-contribution rate can sit near 10% in Switzerland, around 19% in the UK, roughly 20-25% under Italy's flat-rate scheme, and close to 48% in Belgium. That is why our country comparison tool converts a single income into every country's typical regime and ranks them from the least to the most taxed, with the option to model your first year, the following years, or the position at regime.
Set the right money aside
Because tax and contributions are usually paid months after you invoice, the single most useful habit for any freelancer is to set aside a slice of every payment. The right percentage depends on your regime, but it typically lands between 20% and 35% of income. The set-aside calculator tells you exactly how much to keep from a given invoice, so a tax bill never comes as a surprise.
Built on official sources, updated for 2026
Tax is a "Your Money, Your Life" subject: a wrong figure can cost you real money. Every rate on BizTaxCalc is based on official sources, the national tax authority for each country cross-checked against PwC Worldwide Tax Summaries, and dated to the 2025 and 2026 tax years. We show the sources on each calculator, keep the rules versioned by year, and state clearly what is and is not included (local, regional, state and cantonal taxes vary by location and are flagged where relevant). BizTaxCalc gives you a transparent estimate to plan with. It does not replace advice from a licensed tax professional, and for any binding decision you should confirm the figures with an accountant qualified in your country.
Ready to see your own numbers? Pick your country above, or jump straight to the comparison to see where you would pay the least.