Self Employment taxes is one reason I never considered doing side work. Taxes would total almost 50- (Federal 28%, state 6%, SSA 12.4%, Medicare 2.8%).

Now, between the tax cut that makes our marginal tax rate 24%, and that my primary job puts me over the social security maximum, my total taxes would be 32.8%. But I still have a magic number that no one has been willing to reach to make side work worth it for me.

The nice thing about side work is you can write tons of stuff off as “business expenses.” Your actual taxes are a lot less than you think because of all these write offs.