The exclusion removes your income tax. It does not remove the 15.3% self-employment tax.
Support you raise as a self-employed minister is SECA income. The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion — $130,000 for tax year 2025 — takes away the income tax and leaves the self-employment tax in place. Where your host country has no totalization agreement, there is no relief from it.
The three things a ministry return gets wrong
Schedule SE is left off
The return shows no tax because the exclusion covered the income, and the 15.3% self-employment tax is never computed. It is the most common error I correct in this group.
A housing allowance is treated as tax-free everywhere
A properly designated parsonage or housing allowance is excluded from income tax — but it stays in the self-employment tax base. Two different answers, one number.
Totalization is assumed to help
Totalization agreements can move coverage to your host country, but most fields of service have no agreement at all — and self-employment is treated differently from employment where one exists.
A worked example, tax year 2025
A self-employed missionary in a country with no totalization agreement, qualifying under the physical presence test.
Questions ministry workers ask
The exclusion covered my income. Why do I still owe?
Because the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion removes income tax, not the 15.3% self-employment tax. Support you raise as a self-employed minister is SECA income, and Schedule SE still has to be computed.
Is my designated housing allowance tax-free?
A properly designated parsonage or housing allowance is excluded from income tax, but it stays inside the self-employment tax base. Two different answers to what looks like one question.
Does a totalization agreement solve the SECA problem?
Sometimes, but most fields of service have no agreement at all, and where one exists self-employment is treated differently from employment. The matrix on this site shows the position for all 46 countries.
Half the self-employment tax is deductible, isn’t it?
It is deductible against income tax — which is worth nothing when the exclusion has already removed the income tax. That detail surprises most people in this group.
I am paid a salary by a sending organisation, not support. Is that different?
Yes, materially. Employment by a US organisation abroad changes both the SECA answer and the withholding position. Tell me which it is on the call.
Bring your support statement to the call.
Support raised, any designated housing allowance, and your field. That is enough to tell you what you owe.