Plan your quarterly 1701Q instalment.
Balance due this quarter
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Cumulative tax to date
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Already paid
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The pay-as-you-go logic behind Form 1701Q
A self-employed Filipino does not wait until April to settle income tax. The Bureau of Internal Revenue (BIR) collects it in instalments through the year on Form 1701Q, then trues everything up on the annual 1701 return. The clever part is that each quarterly filing is cumulative. You do not tax that quarter's income in isolation. You compute the tax on everything you have earned from January to date, then subtract whatever you already remitted in the earlier quarters. The leftover is your balance due now. This tool reproduces that exact two-step: cumulative tax to date, less prior payments.
Because it works on year-to-date figures, the planner expects you to feed it running totals, not the latest quarter alone. If you enter the gross and expenses for the whole year so far, the cumulative tax it shows is what the law would expect by this point in the year, and the balance due is what closes the gap from your past payments.
Graduated and 8 percent behave differently each quarter
The method switch changes the whole calculation. Under graduated, the tool deducts your year-to-date expenses from gross to get net income, then applies the graduated brackets the calculator models: nothing on the first PHP 250,000 of taxable income, then 15 percent, 20 percent, and upward to 35 percent on the highest slice. Under the 8 percent flat option, expenses are ignored entirely. The tool takes year-to-date gross, removes a PHP 250,000 reduction, and charges 8 percent on the rest, and that single figure stands in for both income tax and the percentage tax. These are the rates this calculator applies, and you should confirm the current brackets, the PHP 250,000 figures, and the rate with the BIR before filing.
A second-quarter filing where prior payments matter
Suppose by your second-quarter cut-off you have booked PHP 600,000 of year-to-date gross and PHP 150,000 of deductible expenses, you are on the graduated method, and you already paid PHP 10,000 on your first-quarter 1701Q. Net income to date is PHP 450,000. The graduated tax on that, using the rates this calculator applies, is PHP 32,500. Subtract the PHP 10,000 you have already remitted and the balance due this quarter is PHP 22,500. Without that prior payment the whole PHP 32,500 would fall due now, which is exactly why the subtraction step is the heart of the form.
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The chart breaks the PHP 32,500 cumulative figure into the part already settled and the part still owed.
A cash-flow habit that prevents the April shock
Quarterly filing exists to spread the pain, but freelancers with lumpy income still get caught. A client pays a large invoice in one quarter, the cumulative tax jumps, and the balance due lands on a month when the bank account is thin. The fix is behavioural rather than mathematical: park a fixed slice of every payment, often around a fifth to a quarter of it, into a separate account the moment it arrives, and pay the 1701Q from there. Run your year-to-date numbers through this planner after each big invoice so the next instalment is never a surprise.
This planner covers your income tax only. It does not compute your separate SSS, PhilHealth, and Pag-IBIG contributions, which a registered self-employed person also remits on their own schedule. Those are mandatory and sit outside the 1701Q entirely, so budget for them as a distinct line and confirm the current rates with each agency.
What if my expenses now exceed the cumulative I already paid?
Then the balance due is zero, not a negative number. The tool floors the result at zero, which mirrors the form: a quarter can owe nothing if your year-to-date tax has not yet caught up with prior payments, perhaps after a slow quarter following a strong one. Any genuine overpayment is sorted out on the annual return, either as a refund claim or a carry-over, depending on the option you elect there.
Can I switch from graduated to 8 percent mid-year using this tool?
The tool will happily show both, but the BIR does not let you flip methods quarter to quarter on a whim. You generally signal the 8 percent election in your first-quarter return and it governs the rest of the year. Use the method switch here to decide before you file the first quarter, not to hop between them later. Once gross receipts cross the PHP 3,000,000 VAT threshold, the 8 percent option closes and you revert to graduated rates with VAT in place of percentage tax.