Paycheck Calculator

How this is worked out

Four separate calculations, applied in this order.

Federal income tax. Your gross less any pre-tax contributions, less the standard deduction for your filing status, is your taxable income. The 2026 brackets are then applied marginally — each rate touches only the slice of income inside its own band, never the whole. This is the point almost everyone misunderstands: moving into the 24% bracket does not tax your whole salary at 24%.

Social Security. 6.2% of gross, but only up to the wage base — $184,500 for 2026. Above that it stops entirely, which is why a high earner's take-home pay rises partway through the year.

Medicare. 1.45% of gross with no cap at all, plus an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% on earnings above the threshold for your filing status.

State income tax. Your state's own brackets, standard deduction and personal exemption — all different from the federal ones. Nine states take nothing from wages.

Pre-tax contributions are handled the way payroll actually handles them: a traditional 401(k) reduces your income tax but not your Social Security or Medicare, which are still charged on the full amount. Treating them as exempt is the most common way an online calculator overstates take-home pay.

A worked example

A raise cannot reduce your take-home pay

This is the single most persistent myth about American income tax, and it costs people real money — every year, some people turn down overtime or a promotion because they believe crossing a bracket will leave them worse off. It cannot. The brackets are marginal: the higher rate applies only to the dollars above the threshold, and every dollar below it is taxed exactly as it was before.

On the worked example above, the first $12,400 of taxable income is taxed at 10%, the next $38,000 at 12%, and only the remainder at 22%. The blended result is $13,170 on $83,900 — an effective rate of 15.7%, not 22%. The band-by-band table on this page shows that split for your own salary.

The one thing that genuinely can create a cliff is a benefits phase-out — some credits and subsidies withdraw sharply at a specific income. That is a real effect and it has nothing to do with tax brackets.

Why your December paycheck is bigger

Social Security stops at the wage base. Once your year-to-date earnings pass $184,500 in 2026, that 6.2% deduction disappears for the rest of the year and your net pay jumps by that amount every period until January, when it resets.

Medicare does the opposite. It has no ceiling at all, and above $200,000 an extra 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax begins. Your employer must start withholding it at $200,000 regardless of your filing status, even though a married couple filing jointly does not owe it until $250,000 — the over-withholding comes back when you file.

This calculator works on annual figures, so it shows the year as a whole. If you want to know what a specific paycheck looks like, the answer depends on where you are in the year relative to that wage base.

Nine states take nothing, and that is not the whole story

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming levy no income tax on wages. Washington taxes long-term capital gains but not wages, which makes nine states where a salary is untouched at the state level.

The money is raised elsewhere. Texas and New Hampshire have notably high property taxes; Tennessee and Washington have high combined sales tax rates; Alaska has among the highest local sales taxes in the country despite no state rate. A move that saves you 5% in income tax can cost more than that back in property tax on a house.

This calculator covers state income tax only. Local income taxes are real and not included: New York City adds roughly 3–4%, Philadelphia around 3.75%, and there are several thousand local jurisdictions in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and Alabama that levy their own.

The 401(k) detail that most calculators get wrong

A traditional 401(k) contribution comes out before federal and state income tax. It does not come out before Social Security and Medicare — FICA is charged on your full gross, contribution included. A calculator that exempts your 401(k) from FICA overstates your take-home pay by 7.65% of whatever you contribute.

This one gets it right, which is why adding a contribution here reduces your income tax and leaves your FICA line untouched.

The practical consequence is that the "cost" of a 401(k) contribution is lower than it looks but not as low as some tools suggest. At a 22% federal marginal rate, $1,000 into a traditional 401(k) reduces your take-home by $780, not by $703.

Assumptions and sources

Federal brackets and standard deduction

IRS 2026 inflation adjustments, cross-checked against the Tax Foundation 2026 bracket tables. Both agree. checked 2026-08

Social Security and Medicare

IRS Topic no. 751. 6.2% to a $184,500 wage base; 1.45% uncapped; 0.9% Additional Medicare above the filing-status threshold. checked 2026-08

State brackets, deductions and exemptions

Tax Foundation, "2026 State Income Tax Rates and Brackets", single-filer tables for all 50 states and DC. checked 2026-08

Not included

Local income taxes, tax credits, benefits in kind, and the difference between W-4 withholding and final liability.