Tools / Take-home calculator
After-tax take-home calculator
The number that actually matters when you buy a business: what lands in your pocket after the loan payment, after federal and state income tax, and after the self-employment or payroll tax your entity structure triggers. Computed against the 2026 tables, with the cash left inside the business shown separately. Free to use.
Deal inputs
A sole proprietorship or a single-member LLC that has not elected corporate treatment. The IRS disregards the entity, so all profit lands on your personal return and carries self-employment tax on top of income tax. There is no separate business pocket: you are taxed on the profit whether you withdraw it or leave it in the account.
Down payment $100,000, loan amount $900,000.
$300,000 SDE, $145,730 debt service, $63,699 total tax as pass-through, filing Single
No state selected, so state income tax is excluded.
All profit is yours and all of it is taxed to you, withdrawn or not.
A disregarded pass-through has no separate pocket: the tax follows the profit to you either way.
Year-1 tax bill
What the loan costs
Where year-1 SDE goes
Year-1 waterfall for this structure
The two totals do not add to SDE minus tax, because principal repayment is cash that leaves the business without being deductible. That gap is the reason a levered deal can be taxed on more than anyone actually pockets.
Yearly schedule
Each pair is one year of the loan term; growth is compounded annually.
| Year | SDE | Loan (P / I) | SE tax | Federal | State | Total tax | You keep | In business |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $300,000 | $54k / $92k | $28,450 | $35,249 | $0 | $63,699 | $90,571 | $0 |
| 2 | $300,000 | $60k / $86k | $28,608 | $36,652 | $0 | $65,261 | $89,009 | $0 |
| 3 | $300,000 | $66k / $79k | $28,818 | $38,210 | $0 | $67,028 | $87,243 | $0 |
| 4 | $300,000 | $74k / $72k | $29,074 | $39,939 | $0 | $69,013 | $85,257 | $0 |
| 5 | $300,000 | $82k / $64k | $29,358 | $42,138 | $0 | $71,496 | $82,774 | $0 |
| 6 | $300,000 | $91k / $55k | $29,674 | $44,980 | $0 | $74,654 | $79,616 | $0 |
| 7 | $300,000 | $101k / $45k | $30,025 | $48,135 | $0 | $78,160 | $76,110 | $0 |
| 8 | $300,000 | $112k / $34k | $30,414 | $51,638 | $0 | $82,052 | $72,218 | $0 |
| 9 | $300,000 | $124k / $22k | $30,847 | $55,527 | $0 | $86,374 | $67,896 | $0 |
| 10 | $300,000 | $138k / $8k | $31,327 | $59,976 | $0 | $91,302 | $62,968 | $0 |
Amortization schedule
Remaining balance at the end of each year.
| Year | Payment | Interest | Principal | Balance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | $145,730 | $91,961 | $53,769 | $846,231 |
| 2 | $145,730 | $86,036 | $59,694 | $786,537 |
| 3 | $145,730 | $79,457 | $66,273 | $720,265 |
| 4 | $145,730 | $72,154 | $73,576 | $646,689 |
| 5 | $145,730 | $64,045 | $81,684 | $565,004 |
| 6 | $145,730 | $55,044 | $90,686 | $474,318 |
| 7 | $145,730 | $45,050 | $100,680 | $373,638 |
| 8 | $145,730 | $33,954 | $111,775 | $261,863 |
| 9 | $145,730 | $21,636 | $124,094 | $137,769 |
| 10 | $145,730 | $7,961 | $137,769 | $0 |
Federal brackets, the standard deduction and the dividend rate thresholds are the 2026 figures from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32; payroll figures are 2026 from IRS Publication 15 and Schedule SE; the corporate rate is the flat 21 percent in IRS Publication 542. State brackets are the Tax Foundation's 2026 compilation, a secondary source. Not modeled: the qualified business income deduction, the net investment income tax, state corporate tax, state standard deductions and exemptions, loss carryforwards, and any deduction beyond loan interest and the federal standard deduction. Entity choice also carries legal, liability, payroll-administration and state-filing consequences that no tax calculation captures, and switching later can itself be a taxable event. Estimates only, consult your CPA and your attorney before choosing a structure.
SDE is not take-home
Listings advertise SDE, but an owner never pockets SDE. Two things come out first. Debt service: the loan that bought the business gets paid every month, and on a typical SBA structure that is a six-figure annual outflow. Tax: the earnings that remain are taxed as ordinary income at federal and state rates, and a working owner also owes self-employment or payroll tax on top of that. Once both are paid, the owner keeps a fraction of the advertised SDE, which is why deals that look identical on SDE can feel very different in the owner's bank account.
This calculator runs that waterfall year by year over the loan term: SDE (with optional growth), minus twelve loan payments, minus every tax actually owed under the structure you pick. It reports two figures, not one: what you personally keep, and what cash is left inside the business.
Why filing status and state matter
Federal brackets shift with filing status: married filing jointly reaches each rate at roughly double the income of a single filer, so the same SDE can produce a meaningfully different federal bill. State is a bigger swing still. The 2026 state tables run from nine states with no income tax at all to top marginal rates in the double digits, so two buyers of the same business in different states keep different amounts. Pick both in the calculator and the brackets are applied table by table, not as a flat guess. Married filing jointly uses a state's own joint table wherever it publishes one.
Three structures, three different answers
The same business, bought for the same price at the same rate, pays wildly different tax depending on how the entity is set up, so the calculator models all three properly rather than assuming one.
Pass-through, a sole proprietorship or a single-member LLC, is the simplest: every dollar of profit lands on your return and carries self-employment tax as well as income tax. That payroll layer is the piece most SDE math forgets, and on a mid-six-figure profit it is tens of thousands of dollars.
S corporation splits the profit. You put yourself on payroll at a salary, payroll tax applies to that salary only, and the profit above it reaches your return on a K-1 free of self-employment tax. The catch is that the salary has to be reasonable compensation for the work you actually do, and that you are taxed on the K-1 profit whether or not the cash is ever distributed to you.
C corporation makes the company its own taxpayer. It deducts your salary, pays a flat 21 percent on what is left, and you are taxed a second time on any dividend it pays you. Two layers of tax, but profit you leave inside the company is not taxed to you at all until it comes out, which is why the structure appeals to buyers reinvesting hard for growth.
The interest deduction rebate
Business loan interest is tax deductible, and in the early years of an amortizing loan most of the payment is interest. The calculator shows tax two ways, exactly as the underlying model does: the tax on full SDE, and the rebate, the tax you avoid because year-1 interest reduces taxable income. Net tax, the figure the take-home number uses, is tax on SDE minus interest. As the loan amortizes the interest share shrinks, so the rebate fades in the later years of the schedule.
A 2026 snapshot, and an estimate
Brackets change every year. The federal brackets, standard deduction and qualified-dividend thresholds here are the 2026 figures published in IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, and the payroll figures are the 2026 wage base and rates from IRS Publication 15. State brackets are the Tax Foundation's 2026 compilation of all 51 jurisdictions, which is a secondary source and labeled as one on the tool. Federal and state figures are both from the same year here, and the badge next to the results says which.
What is still not modeled: the qualified business income deduction, the 3.8 percent net investment income tax, state corporate income tax, state standard deductions and exemptions, and loss carryforwards. Entity choice also carries legal, liability and payroll-administration consequences that no tax calculation captures. Estimates only, consult your CPA and your attorney.
Frequently asked questions
Which tax year do these figures use?
Federal brackets, the standard deduction and the qualified-dividend rate thresholds are the 2026 amounts from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, read from the Revenue Procedure itself. Payroll figures are 2026 from IRS Publication 15 and Schedule SE, and the corporate rate is the flat 21 percent in IRS Publication 542. State brackets are the Tax Foundation's 2026 published compilation. The tool labels the federal and state years next to the results so there is never a question which year you are looking at.
Does this include self-employment or payroll taxes?
Yes, and it matters more than most buyers expect. A pass-through owner pays self-employment tax: 12.4 percent for social security on net earnings up to the 2026 wage base, 2.9 percent for Medicare with no cap, and a 0.9 percent surtax above the statutory threshold, with half of the first two deductible against income tax. An S or C corporation owner pays FICA on their salary instead, both the employee half withheld from them and the employer half paid by the company. Ignoring this layer overstates take-home by tens of thousands of dollars on a typical acquisition.
Which entity structure should I choose?
That is a question for your CPA and your attorney, not a calculator. What this tool can do is show you the tax arithmetic side by side, so you arrive at that conversation knowing roughly what each structure costs you and how much cash each one leaves inside the business. Tax is only one input: liability, payroll administration, state filing requirements, who else owns equity, and how you eventually plan to sell all push the answer around, and switching structures later can itself be a taxable event.
Why does the standard deduction have a toggle?
Because it changes the answer materially and you should be able to see both. The 2026 standard deduction is $16,100 for a single filer and $32,200 filing jointly, subtracted from income before the brackets are walked. It is on by default because almost every buyer takes it. Turn it off if you expect to itemize a different amount, or to see the tax on gross income. It does not touch self-employment or payroll tax, which are figured before it.
Why are there two totals instead of one take-home number?
Because in a corporation they are genuinely different pots. Cash the company keeps is not yours to spend until it comes out, and in a C corporation taking it out triggers a second layer of tax. Reporting one blended number would hide exactly the tradeoff the structure exists to make. In a pass-through the distinction disappears: you are taxed on every dollar of profit whether you withdraw it or not, so the business side reads zero.
Why is interest deducted from taxable income but not principal?
Interest on a business acquisition loan is a deductible expense, so it reduces taxable income and produces the rebate the results show. Principal is not deductible: it is repaid with after-tax dollars, which is exactly why a heavily levered deal can be taxed on more than the owner actually keeps.
What if my state has no income tax?
Pick it anyway: states with no income tax are in the table at a zero rate, so the state line simply shows $0 and the take-home figure reflects federal tax and debt service only. Leaving the state unselected has the same effect but the page will remind you state tax is excluded.