Overall Tax Estimator
You have a job and a business. See how your tax bill shifts as one grows into the other, and how your state compares.
Your Base Year
What you earn, own and spend this year. Every figure on this step is an annual amount. The next four years need four numbers each, and Step 2 prefills them.
Where you are
Where you live and where the business is registered. This tool assumes they are the same.
Sets the federal and state bracket schedules and the standard deduction.
Children under 17 who qualify for the child tax credit — often worth more than the gap between two states.
How is the business taxed? this is the tax election, not the entity type
Most side businesses start owner-run: the business does not file its own return, and the profit lands on your personal one. You take money out as draws, not payroll, and pay self‑employment tax on all of it. Filing jointly does not change this — the business belongs to whoever opened it, and its profit appears on your joint return.
An S‑corp is the same LLC, elected to be taxed differently. It must run payroll for you, and only that salary carries payroll tax. It costs more to run, so it wins only once profit is large enough. Try both.
Your employment income (Year 1)
Gross wages before withholding, for everyone in the household with a job.
Contract work done for someone else. If the 1099 income is your own business billing its clients, it belongs in Your business below, not here — entering it twice taxes it twice.
Leave out 401(k) and IRA contributions and employer matches, Social Security and pension income, stocks, bonds, funds, dividends, interest, rental income, and anything you sell for a gain. This tool covers money you earn from working — a job and a business — and the tax on it. Investment income is taxed on a different schedule with its own state‑by‑state map.
Your home
Market value, not what you paid. Leave blank if you rent. Your mortgage or rent payment goes in Housing below either way.
Your annual household spend
Enter what you actually pay, sales tax included — the receipt total, not the shelf price. The readout below separates the sales tax back out. Step 2 grows these forward at an assumed a year; holding spend flat instead makes year-over-year changes easier to read, so you may prefer to overwrite those cells to match Year 1.
Capital investment is not included here. A new roof, a car bought outright, a down payment — leave those out, along with any other one‑off purchase. This is recurring spending only.
Your business (Year 1)
You do not pay yourself on this list. Running the business owner-run, you take draws rather than payroll — a draw is not a business expense and does not reduce profit.
EBITDA is earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization. A sanity check, not the tax base — profit is. Revenue is entered separately because a few states tax it directly, profit or no profit.
Income Before Tax
Year 1 comes from Step 1. The rest are placeholders on a plain growth curve. Overwrite them with your own view.
Choose your home state in Step 1. Every rate on this page is state-specific, so there is nothing to show until then.
| Year | W‑2 wages | 1099 / contract | Household spend | Business revenue | Business costs |
|---|
Pre‑tax surplus by year — household and business
The Tax Impact
Income in, spending and tax out, and what is left is yours.
Choose your home state in Step 1. Every rate on this page is state-specific, so there is nothing to show until then.
The arithmetic
| Job only | Job + business | Business only |
|---|
Spend does not change between columns. Leaving the job does not shrink the household.
Where the tax goes
Business figures are incremental — what your total rises by when the business is included, not a separate bill.
How your home state compares
Surplus After Tax
The same three buckets, across the trajectory from Step 2.
Choose your home state in Step 1. Every rate on this page is state-specific, so there is nothing to show until then.
Year by year
| Year | Income | Spend | Tax | Remaining |
|---|
Assumptions & Sources
This tool is a way of thinking about the decision, not a tax computation. It exists to show you the SHAPE of what happens as a business grows next to a job — which way the numbers move, and roughly how far — so you can tell a question worth asking from one that is not. It is not a return, and no figure on it is a filing position.
The rates come from public sources, and those sources do not always agree with each other. Where we found a genuine conflict, the table below says so and names both readings rather than quietly picking one. Some figures we read against a primary source this pass; most we carried from a reputable compilation and did not re-check. The right-hand column tells you which is which for every single input.
We do not guarantee any of it is accurate or current. Tax rules change, published compilations lag, and simplifications we have made deliberately — each one listed below — will be wrong for some households. Check anything you intend to act on with an accountant or tax attorney who knows your situation.
What the model does
- Assumes you live and register the business in the same state.
- Treats household spending as tax‑inclusive, strips sales tax at your state’s rate, and moves it to the tax line.
- Applies your Step 1 election to all three scenarios equally.
- Run owner-run, takes no owner salary and applies self‑employment tax to all profit.
- Adds employer payroll tax to employee wages at that state’s rate.
- Attributes business tax incrementally — the amount your total rises by, not a separate bill.
- Applies property and sales tax in every scenario.
- Holds tax rates flat across all five years.
What it ignores
- Investments — capital gains, dividends, estate and inheritance tax, retirement contributions.
- Capital investment and one‑off purchases.
- Remote work across state lines, and convenience‑of‑the‑employer rules.
- Industry and excise taxes, and local variation within a state.
- That the same basket costs different amounts in different states before tax.
- Itemized deductions beyond the SALT deduction, and every credit except the child tax credit.
- Business personal property tax on equipment.
- C‑corp treatment — see the Company Setup Checklist.
Where every figure comes from
The rows below are specific to your home state. Choose one in Step 1 to see them.
| Input | Source, and what we assumed | Provenance |
|---|
Three Flows Solutions is a business consultancy. These tools are provided to introduce business logic. Do not use the output as the basis for a final business decision or for execution without discussing it with qualified professional service providers, and check the federal, state, and institutional regulations, laws, and standards that apply to your situation.
Nothing you enter in these tools is sent to us or stored anywhere — we have no record of it and cannot retrieve it for you. Your entries exist only while the page is open; refreshing or leaving the page clears them. Download the PDF if you want to keep your work.
Tax rates, brackets and thresholds in this tool are compiled from public sources for a single tax year and may be out of date or simplified — several are estimates rather than confirmed figures, and Step 5 shows you which. It models the taxes that vary most by location for an owner-operated business, holds rates flat across all five years, and ignores the items listed in Step 5. The output is a high-level estimate meant to show the shape of the decision, not a tax computation.