Editorial Standards
By Andrew James Flores, Nathan Management · Updated September 23, 2026 · Editorial Standards
BillMyRate publishes a pricing calculator and guides for freelancers and independent service businesses in the United States. This page explains how those pages are sourced, calculated, dated and corrected, and shows you how to check a number yourself before you put it in a quote, a budget or an estimated-tax payment.
Who is responsible
Who writes this — Andrew Flores, working alone, with AI assistance used for drafting and checking and never as a source.
BillMyRate is published by Nathan Management under the direction of Andrew James Flores, who is responsible for everything on the site.
Before a page is published or updated, calculated figures are recomputed from the stated formula, sourced figures are compared with their cited documents, and source links are re-checked.
Pages are not reviewed by an accountant or attorney; tax and legal material is educational.
Andrew prices and invoices his own service work and built this calculator to replace guesswork with a formula. The rules below apply to every page on the site. If you find a page that falls short of them, the corrections section explains how to report it.
Three kinds of information, and how to check each
Every guide mixes three kinds of material. Knowing which one you are reading tells you how much weight it can carry in your own decision.
| Kind | What it looks like | How to check it |
|---|---|---|
| Primary-source fact | A rule, form or figure from a government publisher, linked to the document it comes from. Example: IRS Form 1040-ES (2026) states that for 2026 the maximum amount of wages and self-employment earnings subject to Social Security tax is $184,500. | Open the linked document. Confirm the tax year, the form line or section, and that the rule covers your situation. The same limit was $176,100 for 2025, according to the 2025 Instructions for Schedule SE, so last year's figure would be off by $8,400. |
| Calculation | A result derived from stated inputs and a published formula. Example: the calculator's $66.67 hourly floor, which is an $80,000 budget divided by 1,200 billable hours, rounded up to the cent. | Enter the same inputs in the calculator, or work the formula below by hand. Your result should match to the cent (rounded up to the next cent). |
| Illustration | Inputs chosen to demonstrate a method, such as the 25-hour week and four weeks off used as calculator defaults, or the sample budgets in the rate floor tables. | Replace the example inputs with your own. The method carries over; the example's result belongs to the example. |
Market information deserves the same separation. Employee wages, the rates freelancers advertise and the fees they actually collect measure different things. The author's practice is to keep them in separate columns rather than convert one into another with a markup percentage; the benchmarking guide shows how to build that comparison from your own sources.
What the calculator computes
The calculator turns an annual plan into an hourly price floor. It takes seven planning inputs: your pre-tax personal income goal, business operating costs, a personal benefits budget, billable hours per week, weeks with no billing, "Invoices eventually collected (%)", and the percentage fee taken from collected payments. The "Current or proposed rate ($/hour)" field tests a rate you are considering, and a separate project check converts the floor into a minimum fixed price for a single job.
annual billable hours = hours per week × (52 − weeks off)
retention = (collection % ÷ 100) × (1 − fee % ÷ 100)
revenue needed = (income goal + operating costs + benefits) ÷ retention
hourly floor = revenue needed ÷ annual billable hoursWith the calculator's illustration inputs ($75,000 income goal, $5,000 operating costs, no separate benefits budget, 25 billable hours a week, 4 weeks off, full collection, no fees and $80.00 in "Current or proposed rate ($/hour)"), the budget is $80,000 across 48 working weeks and 1,200 billable hours. The unrounded floor is $66.666… an hour, displayed as $66.67. The method section walks through each step, and the calculation source file is the exact code the calculator runs.
Calculation rules every page follows
- Displayed rate floors round up to the next cent. Rounding down leaves the plan short, as the table below shows. Intermediate steps keep full precision.
- Percentage losses are applied by division. If a platform keeps 20% of every payment, the illustrative $80,000 budget needs $80,000 ÷ 0.80 = $100,000.00 invoiced. Adding 20% instead gives $96,000.00, which leaves $76,800.00 after the fee: $3,200.00 short of the budget.
- Taxes are planned separately. The floor funds income before personal taxes. Income tax and self-employment tax are covered in the self-employment tax guide and the estimated-tax guide.
- Out-of-range inputs clear the result. If an input is outside its allowed range, the calculator hides the result and names the field to fix, so an old price never stays on screen next to new inputs.
| Hourly rate charged | Invoiced over 1,200 hours | Against the $80,000 budget |
|---|---|---|
| $66.66 (rounded down) | $79,992.00 | $8.00 short |
| $66.67 (rounded up, the displayed floor) | $80,004.00 | $4.00 over |
The calculator's "Annual amount to invoice at the floor" uses the unrounded floor ($66.666… × 1,200 = $80,000.00); charging the displayed $66.67 for the same hours brings in $80,004.00.
Eight dollars looks small, but a plan that rounds down comes up short every year it is used, by as much as a cent for every billable hour. Rounding up means the displayed floor always covers the whole plan.
Check a result yourself
The quickest way to trust or reject a figure is to reproduce it. This check takes about five minutes and tests rule 2 above in the live calculator.
- Open the calculator. It loads with the illustration inputs described above, and the hourly floor reads $66.67.
- Change "Fees on collected payments (%)" from 0 to 20, a 20% fee, used here as an example. Leave every other input as it is.
- Compare the updated results with the table below. Each figure should match to the cent.
| Result in the calculator | Expected value | How it is derived |
|---|---|---|
| Hourly rate floor for your goal | $83.34/hr | $100,000.00 ÷ 1,200 hours = $83.333…, rounded up |
| Annual amount to invoice at the floor | $100,000.00 | $80,000.00 budget ÷ 0.80 retained |
| Fees on collections (in the revenue breakdown) | −$20,000.00 | 20% of $100,000.00 collected |
| Personal income before taxes at this rate (the $80.00 tested rate) | $71,800.00 | $96,000.00 invoiced × 0.80 − $5,000.00 assumed operating costs |
| At $80.00/hr, you are $3,200.00 short of your annual pre-tax income goal. | $3,200.00 short | $75,000.00 − $71,800.00 |
The $3,200.00 shortfall is the same gap rule 2 describes. The tested $80.00 rate is exactly the no-fee floor of $66.666… plus 20%, and adding a percentage never recovers a percentage that is taken away. If your results differ, send the inputs and the figures you see, following the steps in the corrections section below.
How a page is checked before it is published or updated
- Calculated figures are recomputed from the formula shown on the page or in the calculator's source file; figures taken from a source, such as IRS wage bases and BLS wages, are compared with the document cited beside them.
- Tax figures that change from year to year are printed with the tax year they apply to, as in the Social Security example above.
- Each worked example lists its inputs, so you can reproduce it in the calculator.
What the dates mean
The date under a page's title changes when the page changes in substance: a new section, a changed figure, a corrected error or a new source. Typo fixes and layout changes leave it alone. The tax year a source covers is stated next to the source itself, because a page updated in September can correctly cite a form released months earlier; the 2026 Form 1040-ES, for example, is dated February 12, 2026.
Advertising and independence
Google may display advertisements on this site; see the privacy policy for details. Advertising has no influence over which formulas, figures, sources or recommendations appear in a guide. Guides currently carry no sponsored placements or affiliate links; if that changes, the page involved will say so next to the link.
Corrections and questions
If a number, source or statement looks wrong, send it through the contact page or to nathanmanagement@agentmail.to. A useful report includes:
- the page URL and the sentence or table row in question;
- for a calculation, the inputs you entered and the result you got;
- a primary source, if you have one, such as the IRS form or publication that says otherwise.
Leave out tax returns, account credentials and private client details; a page can always be checked without them. Messages are read by Nathan Management. Replies usually arrive within three business days. When a report shows a figure or source is wrong, the page is corrected and the date under its title changes.