What counts as a good score?

Above 70 means nothing in your year is quietly bleeding money: installments get paid, deductions get captured, and one client leaving would not end you. Between 40 and 70 usually means one big piece is missing, most often the cash buffer or unused retirement room. Below 40 there are normally two structural problems at once. The defaults this page loads with, $90,000 of profit, half the installments paid, 45% of billing with one client and $9,000 banked, score 32: $8,850 of unused retirement shelter, $2,455 the S-corp election would save, $715 of IRS interest already running, and separately $40,500 of profit riding on one client.

Are the dollar figures real, or rules of thumb?

They come from the same engines as the individual calculators, with their tax-year constants: Form 2210 interest for missed installments, the payroll-tax gap for the S-corp election, the IRS standard mileage rate, the $5 per square foot simplified home office rate. The one judgement call is the S-corp salary split, set at 60% because that is the default on our S-corp page. If your reasonable salary is different, run it there.

Why is client concentration in a finance score?

Because it is the fastest way to lose the income everything else is measuring. Billing 70% of your year to one client leaves you one email away from a 70% pay cut, and no deduction fixes that. We keep it out of the tax-gap list, though: dollars at risk and dollars of tax are different units, and ranking them together would always put the scariest number on top instead of the most expensive problem.

Personal finance

Freelance finance score

Most freelance money problems are not mysterious, they are unpriced. This reads six parts of your year, weights them into one number, and hands back the three gaps costing you the most, each in dollars. Every figure comes from the engines behind our other calculators, so you can click through and check the math yourself.

Your year

Net profit this year

Revenue minus business expenses: the Schedule C bottom line.

Other taxable income

W-2 wages or interest stacked underneath the freelance profit.

Business structure

An LLC taxed as a sole proprietor scores the same as a sole proprietor: only the S-corp election changes payroll tax.

Estimated tax payments

How many of the four installments you actually paid on time.

Into retirement this year

Dollars already in a solo 401(k), SEP-IRA or similar.

Age at year end

Decides which retirement catch-up tier applies to you.

How you track expenses

Nothing, a spreadsheet you keep current, or bookkeeping software.

Home office square feet

Space used regularly and only for work. Zero if you do not have one.

I deduct that home office

Business miles driven

Client visits, supply runs, anything that is not commuting.

I keep a mileage log

Biggest client's share

What percent of your billing comes from one client.

Monthly spending

Personal plus business: what one month of your life costs.

Cash in reserve

Money you could live on if the work stopped tomorrow.

Your score

Finance score32/ 100

At risk

Your three biggest gaps

Tax shelter left unused Fix it: $8,850 a year in tax
S-corp election you have not made Fix it: $2,455 a year in tax
IRS interest on the installments you skipped Fix it: $715 a year in tax

Also on the line

Profit riding on one client Fix it: $40,500 of profit exposed
Distance from a six-month buffer Fix it: $18,000 still to set aside

Six areas, weighted

Structure 20% of the score: 28
Estimated payments 20% of the score: 50
Deductions captured 15% of the score: 20
Retirement 15% of the score: 0
Cash buffer 15% of the score: 33
Client mix 15% of the score: 56

The numbers behind it

Federal tax on the freelance profit: $22,732
What a dollar of deduction saves you: 34.6%
Buffer you have now: 2.0 months

Estimate

workingfigures.com/calculators/freelance-finance-score

How the score is built

Score = sum of (area score x weight), with weights of 20% structure, 20% estimated payments, 15% deductions, 15% retirement, 15% cash buffer, 15% client mix. Each gap is priced by the calculator that owns it: payroll-tax saving for the S-corp election, Form 2210 interest for skipped installments, deduction x marginal value for the home office and mileage, marginal rate x unused room for retirement.

Assumptions

Single filer, federal only, no state layer. The S-corp comparison pays 60% of profit as salary and $2,000 a year in extra running costs, the defaults of our S-corp calculator. The retirement benchmark is 15% of net profit, capped by the solo 401(k) ceiling for your age. The buffer target is six months of spending. A client counts as concentrated above 25% of your billing and critical at 70%. A dollar of business deduction is valued at self-employment tax plus your income-tax bracket on what is left of it. The constants are the ones our other engines already carry: 2025 brackets and wage base (IRS Rev. Proc. 2024-40), retirement limits (IRS Notice 2024-80), the $0.70 standard mileage rate (IRS Notice 2025-5), the $5 per square foot simplified home office rate (IRS Rev. Proc. 2013-13) and the underpayment rates at irs.gov/payments/quarterly-interest-rates.

Uses 2025 IRS constants (standard deduction $15,000; Social Security wage base $176,100).

FAQ

What counts as a good score?: Above 70 means nothing in your year is quietly bleeding money: installments get paid, deductions get captured, and one client leaving would not end you. Between 40 and 70 usually means one big piece is missing, most often the cash buffer or unused retirement room. Below 40 there are normally two structural problems at once. The defaults this page loads with, $90,000 of profit, half the installments paid, 45% of billing with one client and $9,000 banked, score 32: $8,850 of unused retirement shelter, $2,455 the S-corp election would save, $715 of IRS interest already running, and separately $40,500 of profit riding on one client.
Are the dollar figures real, or rules of thumb?: They come from the same engines as the individual calculators, with their tax-year constants: Form 2210 interest for missed installments, the payroll-tax gap for the S-corp election, the IRS standard mileage rate, the $5 per square foot simplified home office rate. The one judgement call is the S-corp salary split, set at 60% because that is the default on our S-corp page. If your reasonable salary is different, run it there.
Why is client concentration in a finance score?: Because it is the fastest way to lose the income everything else is measuring. Billing 70% of your year to one client leaves you one email away from a 70% pay cut, and no deduction fixes that. We keep it out of the tax-gap list, though: dollars at risk and dollars of tax are different units, and ranking them together would always put the scariest number on top instead of the most expensive problem.