Take-Home Pay Calculator

Why the number is smaller than your bracket suggests

Almost everyone who is surprised by their first real paycheck is surprised for the same reason: they multiplied their salary by their tax bracket. That is not how any of this works. A bracket is a rate on a band of income, not on a person. If you are single with a salary in the low six figures, your income fills the 10% band, then the 12% band, then part of the 22% band — and your effective federal rate ends up around 11%, even though the last dollar you earned was taxed at 22%. The calculator above prints both numbers, because they answer different questions: the marginal rate tells you what a raise or a deduction is worth, and the effective rate tells you what you actually paid.

The other reason is that federal income tax is only the first of three bills. Social Security and Medicare are withheld from wages without regard to brackets or deductions, and they are not small: 7.65% of your pay for almost everyone, on top of income tax. In most states a third bill follows, and in ten of them a fourth — a county or city income tax that this calculator deliberately does not guess at, because it depends on where you live rather than where you work.

Payroll tax is where the brackets do not help

Income tax has brackets, a standard deduction, and a long list of things that reduce it. Payroll tax has almost none of that. Social Security's 6.2% stops at the wage base — — for 2026 — which means high earners stop paying it partway through the year, and everyone below that line pays it on every dollar. Medicare's 1.45% has no ceiling at all, and above the additional Medicare threshold another 0.9% applies. A deferral to a 401(k) lowers your income tax and not your payroll tax, which is exactly why the trade-off note above shows a smaller cost per paycheck than the amount you are saving.

That asymmetry is worth internalising: section 125 premiums and payroll HSA contributions escape both taxes, while a 401(k) deferral escapes only one. If you are choosing where the next dollar of pre-tax money should go and you have a high-deductible health plan, the HSA is the more efficient dollar — it is the only account in the tax code that is untaxed going in, untaxed as it grows, and untaxed coming out for medical costs.

What a state line really represents

Nine states levy no wage tax at all, and their residents owe nothing on this line. Fifteen tax wages at a single flat rate, which makes the arithmetic trivial. The rest graduate, and how sharply varies enormously: some reach their top rate before $20,000 of income, while a handful only reach it above a million. The calculator uses each state's own brackets and its own standard deduction or exemption — and in seven states, the deduction or exemption is not a deduction at all but a fixed credit subtracted from the tax, which is why the same income can produce a very different state bill in two otherwise similar states.

Two caveats belong next to any state figure. Local income taxes are excluded: Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Kentucky and Michigan all have county or city taxes that can add several percentage points, and in a few cities that is a bigger number than the state rate itself. And credits are excluded: most states offer earned income, child, retirement and property-tax credits that reduce the bill, so where those apply this estimate is an upper bound rather than a prediction.

Withholding is not your tax

The number your employer withholds is an instalment, calculated from the percentage method and your Form W-4 — how many dependents you claimed, whether you ticked the box for a second job, and the pay-period tables. It is a guess about your annual liability, and it is a good one, but it is a guess. That is why the refund exists: people over-withhold all year and then celebrate getting their own money back in April, interest-free.

The distinction matters when you are planning. Use this page for what your budget will actually see — the liability a full year at this salary produces — and use the W-4 when you want to change what is taken out along the way. If you had a large refund last year, this calculator and your last pay stub together will tell you roughly how much of that was a deliberate savings plan and how much was an accident. And if you expect a bonus to be withheld at 22% while your marginal rate is higher, the gap is worth fixing before the following April.

Reading the two charts

The split chart is the answer to "where did it go", with no rounding tricks: pre-tax deductions, then each tax, then what remains. The rate chart is the one to keep: it plots your effective and marginal federal rate as income rises at your state, status and deferral, so you can see exactly where the next bracket starts and what the next raise will cost. A raise that crosses a threshold is never "worse than no raise" — the higher rate applies only to the dollars above the threshold — but the marginal rate is the number to use when deciding whether a Roth conversion, an extra deferral or a deduction is worth more than it looks.

Frequently asked questions

Why is my take-home pay less than I calculated from my tax bracket?

A salary is never taxed at one rate. Federal income tax is progressive, so only the dollars above each threshold are taxed at the next rate, and the result on a middle income is far below the top rate that applies to your last dollar. Then payroll tax comes on top: Social Security and Medicare, which no bracket and no deduction avoids, and state income tax in most states. The calculator shows each of those lines separately, plus your effective rate over the whole salary and the marginal rate on the last dollar.

Do 401(k) contributions reduce payroll tax?

No. A traditional 401(k) deferral comes out of federal income tax and, in most states, out of state income tax — but it does not come out of Social Security or Medicare. You still pay 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare on the deferred amount. Section 125 premiums and HSA contributions made through payroll are different: those come out of income tax and payroll tax both, which makes them more valuable per dollar.

What is the difference between my marginal rate and my effective rate?

The marginal rate is what the next dollar of income costs, and it governs decisions: it is what a deduction saves and what a raise above a threshold is taxed at. The effective rate is total tax divided by total income, and it is always lower. Mixing them up is the most common error in tax discussions — a household with a 22% marginal rate usually pays an effective federal rate near 10%.

Does this calculator match my employer's withholding exactly?

Not always, and it is not designed to. This computes your tax liability for the year on the 2026 tables. Your employer withholds using the percentage method on your Form W-4, which depends on the dependents and adjustments you claimed, whether you ticked the multiple-jobs box, and the pay-period tables. The two converge on your annual return. Use this figure for planning — what your budget will actually see — and the W-4 to change what is withheld during the year.

Why does my state tax differ from this estimate?

Three reasons. Local income taxes are not included: ten states levy county or city income taxes on top of the state rate, and in some cities that is more than the state tax itself. Credits are not included, and most states offer them — earned income, child, retirement income, property tax. And states differ on whether they allow the federal 401(k) exclusion, so a deferral that reduces your state wages in most states does not in Pennsylvania or New Jersey.

Is a bonus taxed at a higher rate?

The bonus is not taxed at a higher rate by law — it is added to the same annual income and taxed by the same brackets. But withholding on a bonus is often a flat 22% supplemental rate, which can be too little if you are in a higher bracket, or too much if you are not. That is why a bonus can produce a surprising refund or a surprise bill in April: the withholding was a guess, and the annual return settles it.

Do I need to pay the additional Medicare tax?

If wages exceed the threshold — $200,000 for a single filer or head of household, $250,000 for a married couple filing jointly, $125,000 for married filing separately — an extra 0.9% applies to the excess. Unlike the Social Security wage base, that threshold is not indexed for inflation. Employers withhold it once your wages cross the threshold, which can leave a couple with two incomes under-withheld, since each employer sees only its own payroll.