Take-Home Pay Calculator

How take-home pay is worked out

Net pay is what survives a fixed sequence of subtractions, and the order matters because different deductions are exempt from different taxes:

gross − pre-tax deductions − federal tax − FICA − state tax − post-tax deductions = net

The key asymmetry: pre-tax deductions reduce income tax but not Social Security or Medicare. A 401(k) contribution lowers your federal tax bill and leaves your FICA unchanged.

Tax brackets are marginal, not a cliff

This is the single most misunderstood part of US income tax. Being "in the 22% bracket" does not mean 22% of your income goes to federal tax. Each slice of income is taxed at its own rate, and only the slice inside a bracket is taxed at that bracket's rate.

These are 2026 tax-year figures, from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32. The standard deduction is $16,100 for a single filer and $32,200 for a couple filing jointly, and Social Security stops at $184,500 of wages. Brackets and thresholds are adjusted for inflation every year, so verify the current numbers with the IRS before relying on them for anything official.

A practical consequence: a raise can never leave you worse off. Crossing into a higher bracket only means the dollars above the threshold are taxed more — everything below keeps its old rate.

Effective vs marginal rate

A single filer on $75,000 with the standard deduction has $58,900 of taxable income. That runs through three brackets:

The marginal rate is 22% — what the next dollar earned would cost. The effective rate on taxable income is 13.0%, and against the full $75,000 gross it is 10.2%. Those three numbers all describe the same tax bill, and people quote whichever suits the argument.

FICA: Social Security and Medicare

Your employer pays a matching 7.65%, so the true cost of employing you is well above your gross salary. If you are self-employed you pay both halves — 15.3% self-employment tax — though you can deduct the employer half when calculating income tax.

The Social Security wage cap means high earners see their take-home rise partway through the year, once wages pass the cap and the 6.2% stops.

Pre-tax and post-tax deductions

Health premiums under a Section 125 cafeteria plan are the best-value deduction available, because they escape income tax and FICA. A 401(k) escapes only income tax.

State income tax: the other half of the answer

Everything above is federal. What actually lands in your account depends just as much on the state, and the spread is wider than most people expect: 9 states take nothing from wages, while California reaches 13.30% at the top. Two people on the same salary can differ by five figures a year on this line alone.

Tax year 2026. Source: Tax Foundation, 2026 State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets, data as of 11 February 2026; checked 17 September 2026. State legislatures move these figures most years, so confirm with the state's revenue department before relying on one.

Three things the table makes visible. A top rate is not your rate — in a graduated state it applies only to the last slice of income, exactly as the federal brackets do, so North Dakota's 2.50% top rate and Pennsylvania's 3.07% flat rate are not comparable numbers. Flat does not mean low — the flat group is now 15 states and spans 2.50% to 5.30%. And no income tax does not mean no tax: the 9 states without one lean on sales and property tax instead, which is why Texas and New Hampshire have among the highest property tax burdens in the country.

Washington is the odd entry: no tax on wages at all, but a 7% tax on long-term capital gains above an annual threshold. For a salary it behaves like a no-tax state; for an equity payout it does not.

Living in one state, working in another

Cross a state line to work and you are, by default, taxable in both — the work state on what you earned there, the home state on everything. Your home state gives a credit for the other state's tax so you are not taxed twice, but you file two returns to get it.

Reciprocity agreements remove that. Where one exists, the work state agrees not to tax your wages at all and your employer withholds for your home state instead — one return, no credit to chase. There are 16 jurisdictions with such agreements, almost all of them in the Midwest and the mid-Atlantic:

The agreement does nothing until you file the form. This is the part that costs people money. Reciprocity is not automatic and payroll cannot apply it on your behalf — until the certificate is on file, your employer is required to withhold for the work state, and recovering it means filing a nonresident return for a refund you should never have been owed.

Where there is no agreement, there is no workaround. The busiest commuter corridors in the country have none: New York and New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts and California have no reciprocity with anyone. New York additionally applies a "convenience of the employer" rule, under which days a non-resident works from home for their own convenience are still taxed as New York days.

Two details that catch people out. The District of Columbia is listed here with Maryland and Virginia, but in practice it does not tax any non-resident's wages — anyone living outside DC files form D-4A and owes DC nothing. And Minnesota and Wisconsin have not had an agreement since 1 January 2010, when Minnesota terminated it over the 17-month lag in Wisconsin's reimbursements. Roughly 13,000 Minnesotans and 33,500 Wisconsin residents were moved onto two-return filing overnight, and plenty of payroll guidance still lists the pair as reciprocal. Minnesota now offers a credit instead.

Why no federal tax was withheld from your paycheck

Seeing $0 in the federal withholding box is usually correct rather than an error. The most common reasons:

• Your income is below the standard deduction. Earn less than $16,100 as a single filer and you owe no federal income tax, so nothing is withheld.
• Your W-4 claims dependents or credits that offset the expected liability.
• You marked "exempt" on the W-4 — valid only if you owed nothing last year and expect to owe nothing this year.
• Part-year or irregular work. Withholding tables annualise each paycheck, so a small cheque looks like a small annual salary.

FICA is different: Social Security and Medicare are withheld from the first dollar regardless of income, so a paystub showing zero FICA on normal wages is worth querying with payroll.

Pay frequency does not change the total

Biweekly and semi-monthly are easy to confuse and are not the same. Biweekly gives 26 paychecks and produces two months a year with three paydays; semi-monthly gives exactly 24 and never does.

Bonuses are not taxed at a higher rate

Bonuses are commonly withheld at a flat 22% supplemental rate, which is not the same as being taxed at 22%. At tax time the bonus is simply ordinary income. If your marginal rate is 12%, you get the difference back as a refund; if it is 32%, you owe more.

The calculator estimates federal figures only and is not tax advice — your state line comes on top of what it shows, local city and county taxes come on top of that, and your own circumstances may change the result. Start with the state table above for what your state adds. For the gross side of the conversion, use the salary and hourly rate calculator; to see what a pre-tax contribution is worth by retirement, the retirement calculator.