Two taxes
Income tax is owed on your profit, whatever the work. Self-employment tax is Social Security and Medicare for people with no employer to withhold them: the IRS gives the rate as 15.3% — 12.4% for Social Security and 2.9% for Medicare — and it is owed once net earnings from self-employment reach $400 in a year.
What the IRS leaves out
The Instructions for Schedule SE list the income that is not counted for self-employment tax. One line of that list is “Fees received for services performed as a notary public.” Publication 334 says the same to a notary directly: “Fees you receive for services you perform as a notary public are reported on Schedule C (Form 1040). These payments are not subject to SE tax”.
So a notary’s fees are income like any other, and go on Schedule C. They are left out of the second tax only.
What the exemption does not name
It names fees for services performed as a notary public, and nothing else. Most of a mobile notary’s invoice is something else: the drive, the printing, the hour at the table, the courier run. Nothing we have read from the IRS says those share the exemption, and Hand & Seal counts them as ordinary self-employment income.
| Fees for the notarial acts | $40.00 |
|---|---|
| Travel, printing and the rest of the signing | $110.00 |
| The invoice | $150.00 |
All $150.00 is income. Only the first line is a notary’s fee. The figures are made up — what you may charge for a notarial act is your state’s to say — but the shape is typical, and it is why an invoice that keeps the two apart is worth having.
How it goes on the return
The Instructions for Schedule SE (2025) give two cases.
- Notary fees are your only self-employment income. You do not file Schedule SE: the instructions have you check box number 3 and enter “Exempt—Notary” on Schedule 2 (Form 1040), line 4.
- You had other earnings of $400 or more subject to the tax — the travel and signing fees above, say. You enter “Exempt—Notary” and your net profit as a notary public from Schedule C beside Schedule SE, line 3, and subtract it.
Net profit, not fees
The second case asks for your net profit as a notary public — so your expenses have to be shared out between the notarial fees and everything else. The instructions do not say how. Ask your tax professional which way to split them, and split them the same way every year. Line numbers move from one year’s forms to the next; the ones here are 2025’s.
Paying through the year
Nobody withholds from a notary’s invoices. The IRS says individuals, sole proprietors among them, “generally have to make estimated tax payments if they expect to owe tax of $1,000 or more when their return is filed”, and divides the year into four payment periods, each with its own due date. Set a share of every payment aside as it arrives, and the four dates stop being a surprise.
What to keep
- Every invoice, with the notarial fee on a line of its own.
- A mileage log, made as you drive — the mileage guide says what it has to show.
- Receipts for what the work costs: the seal and journal, paper and toner, your bond and insurance, your commission’s fees.
- The forms companies send. A company that paid you $2,000 or more in the year for services files a Form 1099-NEC — the floor for payments made in 2026 and after; it was $600. All of your income is reported whether a form comes or not. Getting paid by companies has more.
How Hand & Seal keeps it
Every invoice keeps the notarial fee apart from travel and printing, and the books carry the year’s notarial fees as a figure of their own. The Taxes page works out an estimate of what to set aside for each of the four payments, leaving the notarial fees out of self-employment tax as the instructions do, and hands your tax professional the year laid out along Schedule C’s lines. It is an estimate to check, not a return. See what it does.
This guide explains the IRS’s published rules; it is not tax advice.