If your only taxable income is from your (self-employed) sex work business you can use the calculator below to give you a good idea of how much to set aside. Just enter your total income for the month along with your total allowable business expenses that month, and you will get an estimate of the tax.

You might want to use the calculator in a couple of ways. You could bookmark this page and every month pop in your income and expenses to estimate how much tax to set aside that month. Alternatively you could just do the calculation once: enter what you expect to make in a very good month and use the calculator to tell you what percentage of your income to set aside each month. That way you won’t need to keep coming back here every month, you just apply the percentage to each month’s income and work out for yourself how much to set aside. The first method is more accurate, but you may find the second more convenient.

Either way the figures are just estimates. The tax system works on an annual basis, so doing the sums monthly may not give a strictly accurate result, but it will give you a very good guide, and hopefully save you from embarrassment when the tax bill falls through your letterbox.

One of the challenges for anyone running their own business is knowing how much to set aside each month to cover your tax bills. After you have been in business for a year or so you will have to make regular tax payments every 6 months, but when you first start there can be a long gap before you get your first tax bill. So it’s important to be prepared and I would recommend you get into the habit of putting money aside each month into a separate account.