The money hits your account on a Tuesday. Maybe it is a rideshare payout, a batch of Etsy sales, a freelance invoice that finally cleared, or a few hundred dollars from reselling sneakers. It is not your regular paycheck, which already has a clean tithing rhythm you settled long ago. This is something newer and messier. There were expenses to buy the inventory. There is a chunk you know you owe in taxes but have not paid yet. The amount is different every month, and some months there is almost nothing. So a fair question rises up: how do you honor God with this? Do you tithe on it at all, and if so, on which number?
“Honour the Lord with thy substance, and with the firstfruits of all thine increase: So shall thy barns be filled with plenty, and thy presses shall burst out with new wine.”
Proverbs 3:9-10 (KJV)
Here is the short version, and then we will earn it slowly and honestly. Yes, side hustle income is genuine increase, and the Bible's principle of first fruits applies to it. You tithe on your real profit, not the gross revenue that passes through your hands. How you treat self-employment tax is a conscience question with reasonable answers on both sides. And the practical secret to giving on irregular gig income is to set a fixed percentage and give it the instant money arrives, before it can slip away. What follows is a framework grounded in Scripture, with the real 2026 math worked out, so you can give with a clear head and a cheerful heart.
Start with the word Proverbs uses, because it does a lot of quiet work. Honor the Lord with the firstfruits of all thine increase. Not the firstfruits of your salary, or your farm, or one particular kind of income. All thine increase. Any real gain that comes to you, from whatever source, is increase, and the first and best of it is meant to be offered back to the God who made you able to earn it. A side hustle is increase. The gig economy did not exist when Solomon wrote those words, but the principle reaches it easily, because the principle was never about the mechanism of earning. It was about the heart's posture toward every dollar that comes in.
The tithe itself is older than the Law and broader than any one job. It first appears in Genesis when Abraham gives a tenth of the spoils, and it is written into the Law in Leviticus.
“And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's: it is holy unto the Lord.”
Leviticus 27:30 (KJV)
Notice how it names both the seed of the land and the fruit of the tree, two different kinds of increase, and calls the tithe of each holy unto the Lord. The point is not the crop. The point is that whatever the land produced, the first tenth was set apart as God's before the family took its share. A side hustle is simply another field. The rideshare fares are your seed of the land. The Etsy sales are your fruit of the tree. If your regular job is one field you already tithe from, your side venture is a second field, and the same God who owns the first tenth of the first field owns the first tenth of the second. There is no category of honest increase that sits outside His claim.
Before we touch a single number, sit with why this is good news rather than a burden. Tithing on your side hustle is not God taxing your hustle. It is you getting to acknowledge, in the most concrete way possible, that the ability to earn on the side came from Him. You had the health to drive, the skill to make the thing, the market that wanted it, the free hours to work. None of that was guaranteed. Giving off the top of that increase is how you keep the whole enterprise from quietly becoming a little kingdom of your own. That is worth far more than the dollars, and it is the reason to do this at all.
Now the first hard question, and the good news is that here almost everyone lands in the same place. Do you tithe on the total money that came in, or on what was left after the costs of earning it? The Bible's concept of increase points clearly to profit, not revenue. Increase means what your work actually gained you, and revenue is not gain until you subtract what it cost to produce.
Think about the farmer in Proverbs. His increase was not every stalk that grew in the field. He had to hold back seed for next year, cover the cost of labor, and absorb what was lost to weather and pests. His real increase, the amount his farm genuinely gained him, was the harvest after those costs. The firstfruits came off the top of the true yield, not off a number that included his own expenses. A side hustle works exactly the same way. If you sell 10,000 dollars of handmade goods but spent 4,000 dollars on materials, packaging, and shipping, then 4,000 of that never truly belonged to you. It passed through your account straight to suppliers and the post office. Your actual increase was the 6,000 dollar profit, and that is the number you tithe from.
This is not a loophole to give less. It is honesty about what income even is. Tithing on gross revenue would mean giving a tenth of money you never gained, money that was only ever on its way to someone else. That is not extra holy. It is a misunderstanding of the increase. Legitimate business expenses are the ones that were genuinely necessary to produce the income: materials, inventory, the mileage on your car for deliveries, the platform fees Etsy or Uber take out, the shipping supplies. Subtract those, and what remains is your profit. That profit is your increase, and the first tenth of it is holy unto the Lord.
A word of caution guards this from abuse. Business expenses are the real costs of doing the work, not your personal lifestyle dressed up as a deduction. A new laptop you genuinely need to freelance is an expense. A nicer laptop you wanted anyway and now call a business cost is a gray area your conscience has to handle before God. The Bible cares about a heart that gives freely, and a heart that inflates its expenses to shrink its tithe has already lost the plot. Be as honest with your profit calculation as you would want God to be generous with you.
Here is where a side hustle genuinely differs from a normal paycheck, and where sincere Christians reasonably part ways. When you earn 1099 or self-employment income, no employer withholds taxes for you. You owe them yourself, and beyond regular income tax you owe self-employment tax. According to the IRS, the self-employment tax rate in 2026 is 15.3 percent, made up of 12.4 percent for Social Security and 2.9 percent for Medicare. It applies to your net earnings from self-employment, which is your profit multiplied by 92.35 percent before the rate is applied. This is the employer and employee share of payroll taxes combined, both halves of which you carry alone because you are both the employer and the employee.
So the question becomes: do you tithe on your profit before self-employment tax, or after? Think of it as the side hustle version of the gross versus net debate that salaried givers know well. There is no verse that settles it, because the tithe is thousands of years older than payroll taxes. What we have is a principle to apply thoughtfully, and two faithful ways to apply it.
The case for tithing before self-employment tax runs like this. Those taxes are money you genuinely earned. The government simply claims them the way it claims withholding from an employee's gross pay. If an employee tithes on gross, off the top before taxes, then the self-employed believer tithing on profit before self-employment tax is doing the same faithful thing. It honors the first fruits posture of giving before any other claim divides up your increase. The case for tithing after self-employment tax is also reasonable. That 15.3 percent is a real and unavoidable cost of your self-employment, arguably as much a cost of doing business as your materials were. On that view your true increase is the profit after that mandatory tax, and tithing on it is giving from what you actually kept.
Both honor God. If you want a nudge, lean toward generosity, because the dollar difference is smaller than the anxiety around it, and erring toward the more generous option fits the off the top spirit of first fruits. But do not let this become a scrupulous math contest that steals your joy. Decide once, with a clear conscience, and give cheerfully. God is not auditing which line of your Schedule SE you tithed from.
Let us put actual numbers on all of this, because seeing it laid out takes most of the fear away. Imagine a side hustle that brought in 15,000 dollars of revenue over the year. You spent 3,000 dollars on legitimate expenses: inventory, platform fees, mileage, and shipping. That leaves 12,000 dollars of net profit, which is your increase.
First, tithing on gross revenue versus net profit. A tithe on the full 15,000 dollars would be 1,500 dollars. A tithe on the 12,000 dollar profit is 1,200 dollars. The difference is 300 dollars, and the profit figure is the biblically correct base, because the 3,000 dollars in expenses was never your increase to begin with. Now layer in self-employment tax. Your net earnings for that tax are 12,000 times 92.35 percent, which is about 11,082 dollars. Multiply by 15.3 percent and the self-employment tax is roughly 1,696 dollars. So your profit after that tax is about 10,304 dollars.
That gives us three possible tithe bases and three tithe amounts. Tithe on gross revenue: 1,500 dollars, which overcounts because it taxes money that was never yours. Tithe on net profit before self-employment tax: 1,200 dollars. Tithe on profit after self-employment tax: about 1,030 dollars. The honest range for a faithful believer is the 1,030 to 1,200 dollar band, depending on how you treat that tax. The gap between the two defensible options is around 170 dollars over a whole year, roughly 14 dollars a month. That is the entire stake of the self-employment tax question. It is real, but it is not the difference between honoring God and dishonoring Him. It is two sincere ways of drawing the same line, and either one is a genuine act of worship.
One practical note that trips people up. Because no one withholds your taxes, that 1,696 dollars in self-employment tax is money you must set aside yourself, usually through quarterly estimated payments to the IRS. If you tithe on gross revenue and forget to reserve for taxes, you can find yourself unable to pay the government in April. Tithing on your true profit, and reserving for taxes as diligently as you reserve for giving, keeps you both generous and solvent. Faithfulness and prudence are partners here, not rivals.
Now the problem that actually keeps side hustlers from giving consistently. The income is unpredictable. One month you clear 900 dollars, the next month 150 dollars, and December might be triple your usual. When income lurches like that, a lot of people quietly stop giving on it, telling themselves they will sort it out at the end of the year. Then the end of the year comes, the money is long spent, and the tithe never happened. The irregularity did not make them stingy. It made them scattered.
The Bible actually anticipates this, and its solution is rhythm. Paul gives it plainly.
“Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.”
1 Corinthians 16:2 (KJV)
Look at the mechanics of that instruction. Regularly, on the first day of every week. Personally, every one of you. Proportionally, as God hath prospered him. And crucially, set aside in advance, laid by in store, so that there be no gatherings, no frantic scramble, when the time comes to give. Paul's whole point is to prevent a last minute rush by building a steady habit of setting money aside as it comes in. That is precisely the medicine for irregular gig income. You do not wait for a total. You give off the top of each increase as it arrives, in proportion to what came in.
Practically, this means picking your percentage once and then applying it the instant money lands, before it touches your spending. Open a separate, free savings account and call it your giving account. Every time a payout hits, whether it is 900 dollars or 90, move your giving percentage into that account immediately. A good structure is to split each deposit three ways as it arrives: a slice for taxes, a slice for giving, and the rest to keep. Because the giving comes off the top by rule, a great month simply produces a larger gift and a lean month a smaller one, and both are faithful. You never have to decide in the moment whether you can afford to give, because the decision was already made and the money is already gone before your wants can reach it.
This is first fruits translated into gig economy terms. The farmer did not wait until the whole harvest was in and weighed before deciding what to give. He brought the first of the crop as it ripened, trusting God for the rest. You bring the first of each payout as it clears, trusting God for the next one. The rhythm protects the giving from your own forgetfulness and from the emotional pull of a fat deposit you would rather keep whole.
There is one more thing to guard, and it matters more than any calculation. A side hustle exists to make money, and that is fine. But it can quietly train you to see everything, including God, through the lens of return on investment. If you are not careful, you start to give with a subtle expectation that it will come back to you, that a faithful tithe on the side hustle will make the side hustle grow. Scripture will not let us think that way. Giving is worship, not an investment, and the God who receives your gift is not obligated to pay dividends.
“Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.”
2 Corinthians 9:7 (KJV)
The heart Paul describes gives freely, having purposed it in advance, not grudgingly and not under pressure. Nothing there is transactional. God loves the cheerful giver, not the shrewd one angling for a return. The prosperity idea, that giving is a way to unlock more money, is a distortion that turns worship into a vending machine. The honest truth is that faithful believers give generously and still have slow quarters, failed launches, and side hustles that never quite take off. That does not mean their giving failed. Their giving was never a bet. It was an offering.
So hold the whole thing loosely and joyfully. Your side hustle may grow into something significant, or it may stay a modest stream, or it may fold next year. Give the same either way, off the top of whatever real increase it produces, because the increase came from God and the first of it is His. Do that with a cheerful heart, and you have honored both the Scripture and the math. You will also have kept your side hustle in its proper place, as a good gift to steward rather than a rival to the God who gave you the strength to earn it.
Pull it together into something you can actually do. First, treat your side hustle as a genuine field of increase, and plan to tithe on it just as you do your main income. Second, tithe on your net profit, your revenue minus honest business expenses, because profit is your true increase and revenue is not. Third, decide once whether you give before or after self-employment tax, lean toward generosity if you are unsure, and then stop relitigating it. Fourth, set your percentage and give off the top of every payout the moment it arrives, using a separate account so the gift is gone before it can be spent. Fifth, reserve for taxes with the same discipline, so generosity never leaves you unable to pay what you owe. And through all of it, give cheerfully, expecting nothing back, because this is worship and not a trade.
You do not need a perfect system to start. You need a faithful one. Pick your percentage, open the account, and give off the top of the very next deposit that lands. The heart that gives the first of its increase gladly, in good months and lean ones alike, is the heart God loves, and no side hustle is too small or too irregular to be honored that way.
Tithe on net profit, the money the work actually gained you after legitimate expenses. If you sell 10,000 dollars of handmade goods but spend 4,000 on materials and shipping, only 6,000 was ever real income to you. The Bible ties giving to your increase, and your increase is the profit, not the revenue that passed straight through your hands to suppliers.
That is a conscience question the Bible does not settle directly. Self-employment tax is a real 15.3 percent cost on your net earnings in 2026, so some believers tithe on profit before that tax the way an employee tithes on gross, and others tithe after it as the true amount they kept. Both are faithful. If you want to lean anywhere, lean toward generosity, since the difference is smaller than it feels.
Set a fixed percentage and apply it the moment money lands, before it mixes with your other cash. A good rhythm is to move your giving portion into a separate account with every deposit, so a great month and a lean month both get the same faithful slice. This turns an unpredictable income into predictable giving and keeps you from owing a scary lump sum at year end.
Yes, if the side hustle is genuine new increase. Your day job income and your side income are two separate streams of provision, and first fruits applies to each. Give off the top of the side hustle profit just as you do with your paycheck. If money is tight while you are starting out, begin where you honestly can and grow the percentage as the venture grows.
No. Scripture never promises that giving is an investment that pays you back in cash, and treating it that way turns worship into a transaction. Faithful people give generously and still have slow months and failed ventures. Give because the increase came from God and belongs first to Him, not because you expect Him to wire you a return.
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