A self-employed worker charging $60 an hour in Quebec often earns less per hour actually worked than an employee at $35 an hour. The difference hides in everything you never invoice, and in the contributions an employer used to cover for you.

The invisible hours

For every billed hour, most independents spend real time on prospecting, quoting, invoicing, bookkeeping and client support. A common pattern is 60–70% billable utilization at best: a 40-hour week yields 24 to 28 billable hours. Your $60 has already become $36 to $42 per hour actually worked, before a single dollar of tax.

The costs an employee never sees

  • Double QPP. You are both the employee and the employer, so you pay both halves: 12.60% on net earnings between $3,500 and $74,600, then 8% up to $85,000. An employee pays 6.30% and never sees the other half.
  • No Employment Insurance by default — which cuts both ways. You keep the premium, but you have no coverage unless you opt in, and opting in only buys special benefits such as parental or sickness leave.
  • No paid vacation. An employee accrues 4% of gross earnings, or 6% after three years of continuous service. You accrue nothing: vacation, sick days and statutory holidays are unbilled by definition. Budget for 5 to 7 weeks of zero revenue.
  • No group insurance, no employer retirement contribution. Both come entirely out of your own revenue.
  • Sales taxes to collect and remit. Once revenue passes $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, you must register for and charge GST and QST. That money is never yours — but the filing is one more unbilled task.
  • Equipment, software, workspace, liability insurance. Hundreds a month in many trades.

Work out your real rate in three steps

  1. Realistic billable hours per year: weeks actually worked × billable hours per week. For example, 46 weeks × 25 h = 1,150 h.
  2. Target net income + all business costs + contributions and tax = the gross revenue you need.
  3. Divide. Required revenue ÷ billable hours = your floor rate. Anything below it is a subsidy to your clients.

The second step is where most people underestimate. Remember that income tax applies to your profit at the same brackets as an employee's salary — there is no gentler table for the self-employed — and that the doubled QPP sits on top. What softens it is that you may deduct legitimate business expenses before tax, and deduct the employer half of the QPP from taxable income.

Sanity-check against employment

Convert your target income with the Salarium calculator to see what a Quebec employee would take home on the equivalent salary. As a rough rule, a sustainable self-employed rate is 1.5× to 2× the employee hourly equivalent for the same role. Charging $60 an hour to end up where a $45,000 job leaves you is not a premium — it is parity, with the extra risk thrown in for free.

For the full comparison of the two statuses — contributions, timing of tax, what counts as income — see self-employed vs. salaried in Canada.

Sources

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