What Is SECA Tax for Clergy: Calculation, Filing, and Form 4361

SECA tax for clergy is the self-employment tax that ministers, members of religious orders, and Christian Science practitioners pay on their ministerial earnings in place of regular payroll taxes. The rate is 15.3 percent of net earnings: 12.4 percent for Social Security and 2.9 percent for Medicare. You pay all of it. The church does not withhold Social Security or Medicare from your paycheck and does not owe a matching share, so the full obligation lands on you.¹

Why the Church Doesn’t Withhold FICA

A regular employee splits payroll taxes with the employer: 7.65 percent each, adding up to the same 15.3 percent. Ministers don’t get that split. Federal tax law exempts ministerial earnings from FICA and covers them under SECA instead, which shifts the entire tax to the minister.²

This produces what practitioners call dual-status treatment. If your church issues you a W-2, you are generally a common-law employee for income tax purposes. For Social Security and Medicare, though, the same paycheck is treated as self-employment income. The church withholds no FICA, owes no employer match, and you settle the whole thing yourself.¹

The rule reaches ordained, commissioned, or licensed ministers of a church, members of a religious order who have not taken a vow of poverty, and Christian Science practitioners and readers.³

What Counts as Ministerial Income

The SECA base starts with everything you earn from ministerial services. That means your church salary, plus fees and offerings for weddings, funerals, baptisms, speaking engagements, and similar work. Those fees are self-employment income even when your regular salary is reported on a W-2.⁴

Housing is where clergy get surprised. A housing allowance (or parsonage allowance) is excluded from your gross income for income tax purposes, but it is not excluded for self-employment tax purposes.⁵ If you live in a church-owned parsonage, the fair rental value of the home plus any utilities the church pays gets added to your SECA income. That amount may never appear on your income tax return, but it still increases your self-employment tax. Other fringe benefits tied to your ministry, such as a grocery stipend or personal travel paid by the church, go into the SECA base too.

Calculating Your SECA Tax

Add up gross ministerial income: salary, fees, housing value, and other benefits. Subtract allowable business expenses tied to your ministry. Multiply the result by 92.35 percent. That figure is your net self-employment earnings for SECA.⁶ The 92.35 percent multiplier mirrors a break that regular employees get, since employees never pay FICA on the employer’s half.

The 12.4 percent Social Security portion applies only up to the annual wage base. For 2026, that cap is $184,500.⁷ Earnings above the cap escape the Social Security portion. The 2.9 percent Medicare tax applies to every dollar of net earnings, with no ceiling.

Additional Medicare Tax at Higher Incomes

Self-employment income above $200,000 (or $250,000 if married filing jointly) triggers an extra 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax on the amount over the threshold.⁸ You report it on Form 8959. No employer shares this one either.

Deducting Half of Your SECA

You can deduct half of your total self-employment tax from your adjusted gross income.⁶ It goes on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), not the itemized deductions, so you get it whether or not you itemize. The math sits on Schedule SE itself. Ministerial business expenses can also come off the top: if you work as a self-employed minister for fees, those expenses go on Schedule C and the net carries to Schedule SE. If the expenses relate to your work as a common-law church employee, you subtract them from your wages on Schedule SE and attach an explanation.⁴

Filing and Paying

You report SECA on Schedule SE (Form 1040). The form walks through the 92.35 percent multiplier, splits the Social Security and Medicare portions, and produces your total self-employment tax, which flows to Schedule 2 of your Form 1040.⁹

Because no FICA is withheld, most ministers make quarterly estimated payments using Form 1040-ES. For the 2026 tax year, payments are due April 15, June 15, and September 15 of 2026, and January 15, 2027. You can skip the January installment if you file your full return and pay any remaining balance by February 1, 2027.¹⁰

Avoiding an Underpayment Penalty

Underpay and the IRS charges a penalty. To stay in the safe harbor, your payments should cover either 90 percent of the current year’s tax or 100 percent of last year’s tax (110 percent if your prior-year adjusted gross income topped $150,000).¹¹ Many clergy aim for the prior-year figure because offerings and fees can make current-year income hard to predict.

Voluntary Withholding Through the Church

You can skip the quarterly juggling by entering a voluntary withholding agreement with your church. You tell the church how much to hold back from each paycheck, and the church reports it as income tax withholding on your W-2.⁴ It is not FICA withholding, and your SECA still runs through Schedule SE, but the withheld amount counts toward your total tax and can cover your SECA liability along with income tax.

Opting Out With Form 4361

Ministers who are conscientiously opposed to accepting public insurance benefits on religious grounds can apply for a permanent SECA exemption by filing Form 4361.³ The opposition has to come from the teachings of your religious group or your own religious convictions. Wanting to invest the money privately, or thinking Social Security is a poor deal, is not a basis for the exemption.

You sign under penalty of perjury and supply details including the date of your ordination, commissioning, or licensing.¹² You must also inform your ordaining or commissioning body that you are opting out. Keep paying SECA and making estimated payments until the IRS formally approves the application.

The Two-Year Filing Window

The deadline is tight. Form 4361 must be filed by the due date (including extensions) of your tax return for the second tax year in which you had at least $400 of net self-employment income from ministerial services.¹² Miss it and you owe SECA for the rest of your ministerial career. A lot of clergy discover the exemption only after that window has already shut.

The Exemption Is Irrevocable

Once approved, the exemption is irrevocable under the statute.¹³ Congress twice opened short windows to let ministers reverse the choice, through the Tax Reform Act of 1986 and the Work Incentives Improvement Act of 1999, but both closed decades ago. No current provision lets you opt back in.

What You Give Up

Opting out ends the accrual of Social Security credits on your ministerial income. That reduces or eliminates your future eligibility for Social Security retirement benefits, disability insurance, and survivor benefits for a spouse and dependents. Disability early in your career or an unexpected death leaves your family without a Social Security cushion from your ministerial work.

One partial fallback: if you have 40 quarters of covered employment from non-ministerial jobs, roughly ten years, you may still qualify for benefits on that secular record. Clergy who opted out young often have little secular history to lean on, so the decision deserves careful thought about what private savings and community support would need to replace.

If You Have Taken a Vow of Poverty

Members of a religious order who have taken a vow of poverty follow a different track. Their ministerial earnings performed as agents of the order are already exempt from SECA, and no Form 4361 is required; the earnings belong to the order, not the individual. If the same person takes outside work that is not required by or done on behalf of the order, that outside income is subject to regular income tax and either FICA or SECA depending on the employment relationship.⁴

1
Internal Revenue Service. Members of the Clergy
2
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 417, Earnings for Clergy
3
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 4361, Application for Exemption From Self-Employment Tax for Use By Ministers, Members of Religious Orders and Christian Science Practitioners
4
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 517 (2025), Social Security and Other Information for Members of the Clergy and Religious Workers
5
Internal Revenue Service. Ministers’ Compensation and Housing Allowance
6
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 554, Self-Employment Tax
7
Social Security Administration. Contribution and Benefit Base
8
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 560, Additional Medicare Tax
9
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Schedule SE (Form 1040) (2025)
10
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Form 1040-ES
11
Internal Revenue Service. Estimated Tax
12
Internal Revenue Service. Form 4361 Application for Exemption From Self-Employment Tax for Use by Ministers, Members of Religious Orders and Christian Science Practitioners
13
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1402 Definitions