Tax Calculators

What your salary actually pays after federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare — with an optional pre-tax 401(k). For the full breakdown and FAQ, see the dedicated Take-Home Pay Calculator page; the worked example further down this page traces the same computation for a joint return.

Add sales tax to a price, or extract the tax hiding inside a receipt total. Full guide on the dedicated Sales Tax Calculator page.

What every calculator here models

Every tool on this site runs on one small, tested calculation engine, and every year-dependent constant that engine uses lives in a single data file keyed by tax year. For 2026 that file holds the 7 federal bracket rates, from 10% at the bottom to 37% at the top, with separate taxable-income ranges for single, married filing jointly, and head of household filers; the standard deductions — $16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household; and the FICA rules — Social Security at 6.2% of wages up to the $184,500 wage base, Medicare at 1.45% of all wages, and the 0.9% Additional Medicare surtax, which the engine applies above the $200,000 withholding threshold. The calculators currently support tax years 2025 and 2026; when the IRS publishes the next year's inflation adjustments, the data file gains an entry and every calculator updates together.

The income-tax tools all apply the same sequence. Gross income, minus any pre-tax retirement contribution, minus the standard deduction gives taxable income, floored at zero. The brackets then fill from the bottom: each rate applies only to the taxable income that falls inside its own range, so "being in" a bracket describes where the last dollar lands, never the rate on every dollar. The marginal rate is the last bracket reached; the effective rate divides total tax by income. FICA is computed on gross wages separately and added. That is the whole model — arithmetic on the numbers you enter, with no judgment layered on top. The How Tax Brackets Actually Work guide walks through each step with computed proofs.

What they deliberately leave out

Federal only, by design. Except where a page states otherwise, the income-tax tools model US federal taxes: the brackets, standard deduction, and FICA rules for the supported tax years. The following are real, and they are excluded rather than approximated:

• State and local income taxes — they vary too much to estimate responsibly. The sales-tax tool applies whatever rate you supply; it does not know any jurisdiction's current rate.
• Tax credits of every kind — not modeled, in any amount. A credit reduces tax after the bracket math, and none of these tools knows whether one applies to you.
• Itemized deductions — every income-tax tool assumes the standard deduction. The 2026 deduction tools compute specific deductions, but they do not itemize a return for you.
• The alternative minimum tax, QBI and other business deductions, and multi-state or part-year situations.
• Withholding-table effects — the take-home figures spread estimated annual liability evenly across the year. A real paycheck also reflects W-4 elections, benefit premiums, and other pre- and post-tax deductions.

Because credits, itemizing, and state rules are omitted, every result is a planning estimate of the federal core — the actual liability is determined when you file. Filing-status coverage is deliberately limited too: the ordinary-income tools model single, married filing jointly, and head of household. Married filing separately appears only in the engines where its rules differ enough to matter — the capital-gains calculators and the 2026 deduction tools — and is never assumed elsewhere. The disclaimer gathers these cautions in one place; the methodology page documents the formulas and their sources.

How the tools fit together

The income tools form a chain, and each link adds one thing to the one before it.

1. The Tax Bracket Calculator takes gross income, subtracts the standard deduction for your filing status, and reports which bracket the last dollar lands in. It answers "what bracket am I in?" and nothing more.
2. The Federal Income Tax Calculator takes taxable income directly — no deduction step — and computes the tax bracket by bracket, with the marginal and effective rates. This is the engine the bracket, take-home, quarterly, and tips-and-overtime tools call, and the one the crypto tool's short-term check runs twice.
3. The Take-Home Pay Calculator starts from gross salary, runs the deduction and bracket steps, then adds Social Security and Medicare, with an optional pre-tax 401(k) that reduces income tax but not FICA. The Hourly to Salary Calculator produces the gross figure it needs from an hourly rate; the Bonus Tax Calculator prices a single supplemental payment at the flat withholding rate instead of the brackets.
4. The Self-Employment Tax Calculator and the Quarterly Tax Calculator handle income with no employer withholding. The first computes both halves of Social Security and Medicare on 92.35% of net earnings, plus the deductible half; the second adds the bracket engine on top, applies the Form 1040-ES safe harbor, and splits what withholding does not cover into four installments on the year's due dates.

Alongside the chain sit tools for questions it does not answer: the MAGI Calculator (four purpose-specific definitions, each with only the add-backs its controlling worksheet lists), the Capital Gains and Crypto Capital Gains calculators (the long-term bands stacked on top of ordinary income), and the No Tax on Tips & Overtime Calculator (the OBBBA tip and overtime-premium deductions for tax years 2025–2028).

The 2026 deduction tools — Standard Deduction, Senior Bonus Deduction, SALT Deduction Cap, Auto Loan Interest Deduction, and Charitable Deduction — model individual provisions of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (P.L. 119-21) for tax year 2026: the $6,000 per-person deduction for filers 65 and over, the $40,400 SALT cap with its $10,000 floor, up to $10,000 of qualifying vehicle-loan interest, and the $1,000 ($2,000 joint) non-itemizer charitable deduction. The senior and auto-loan deductions phase out with MAGI and the SALT cap phases down toward its floor; the non-itemizer charitable deduction is a flat cap with no MAGI input. Three points the What OBBBA Changes on Your 2026 Tax Return guide makes and the tools enforce: the senior, auto-loan, and non-itemizer charitable deductions are claimed on Schedule 1-A and never reduce AGI or MAGI (the senior and auto-loan deductions are available whether or not you itemize, the $1,000/$2,000 charitable deduction is for non-itemizers only, and the SALT cap matters only on an itemized return); the 2026 standard deduction already includes OBBBA's permanent increase, so no separate bump is ever added; and every constant behind these tools carries a primary-source citation, last verified against the statute and IRS guidance on 2026-08-18. That check is absence-of-evidence — no later amendment had been found as of that date — not a statement that any figure is final.

Worked example 1: a joint return with a 401(k)

A married couple filing jointly with $120,000 of gross salary in 2026, contributing 5% to a pre-tax 401(k), computed by the take-home engine at build time. The contribution sets aside $6,000; the married-filing-jointly standard deduction of $32,200 then brings taxable income to $81,800. The brackets charge $9,320.00 of federal income tax, and the last dollar lands in the 12% bracket. FICA is a separate computation on the full $120,000 — a 401(k) reduces income-tax wages but not FICA wages — so Social Security takes $7,440.00 and Medicare $1,740.00, $9,180.00 together; the salary sits below the wage base and the surtax threshold, so neither cap applies. What remains is $95,500.00 a year — $7,958.33 a month, or $3,673.08 per biweekly paycheck. All federal taxes together are 15.42% of gross, the figure a 12% marginal bracket is so often mistaken for. State income tax, benefit premiums, and any employer match are outside the model.

Worked example 2: the bracket walk, head of household

A head-of-household filer with $60,000 of gross income in 2026 and no retirement contribution. The head-of-household standard deduction of $24,150 leaves $35,850 of taxable income, and the brackets fill from the bottom:

Federal income tax is $3,948.00. The marginal rate is 12%, the effective rate on taxable income is 11.01%, and measured against gross income the tax is 6.58%. Filing status shapes the walk as much as income does: the head-of-household 10% range runs to $17,700 of taxable income, against $12,400 for a single filer, so the same dollars reach the next rate later. The Tax Bracket Calculator reports only the last row's rate; the Federal Income Tax Calculator produces this whole table from taxable income.

Worked example 3: self-employment tax and the quarterly rhythm

A single filer whose only income is $65,000 of net self-employment earnings in 2026. The self-employment engine first takes 92.35% of net earnings as the taxable base, $60,027.50, then applies both halves of the payroll rates: Social Security at 12.4% gives $7,443.41 and Medicare at 2.9% gives $1,740.80, for $9,184.21 of self-employment tax. The deductible half, $4,592.10, is an income-tax deduction — it does not reduce the self-employment tax itself.

The quarterly engine picks up from there. Expected AGI entered before the half-SE deduction — $65,000 — minus the $4,592.10 half-SE deduction minus the single standard deduction of $16,100 leaves $44,307.90 of taxable income, on which the brackets charge $5,068.95. Income tax plus self-employment tax is $14,253.16 — the estimated federal tax in scope for the year. The Form 1040-ES safe harbor asks for the lesser of 90% of that figure or 100% of the prior year's tax (110% when prior-year AGI exceeded $150,000); with no prior-year figures entered, only the current-year harbor applies, so the required annual payment is $12,827.84. Nothing is withheld, and the balance clears the $1,000 minimum below which no estimated payments are required, so the engine splits it into four installments of $3,206.96, due April 15, 2026, June 15, 2026, September 15, 2026, and January 15, 2027. The underpayment penalty itself is not computed. The Self-Employment Tax, Explained guide traces a different example through the same two engines.

Worked example 4: the tax hiding in a receipt

Sales tax is the one tool on this page with no tax year and no filing status in the formula — only the amount and the rate you supply, which is why the rate is yours to enter. Example, 2026, any filing status — the computation uses neither: take a $1,080.00 receipt total at an assumed 8% combined rate. The backward direction divides: the pre-tax price is $1,000.00 and the tax inside the total is $80.00. Multiplying the total by the rate instead — the common manual error — would give $86.40, because that treats the tax as if it had been charged on the total rather than on the pre-tax price. Forward is the familiar direction: price times rate, then added. The Sales Tax Calculator page covers where combined rates come from and why the same purchase can be taxed differently across a boundary.

How to read the output — and the common misreadings

Three confusions account for most misread results. First, bracket versus bite: the marginal rate prices the next dollar, while the effective or overall rate describes the year as a whole; quoting one where the other belongs is the source of the "raise that costs money" myth, which the bracket guide dismantles with a computed before-and-after. Second, estimate versus withholding: the take-home tools spread the year's estimated liability evenly, and the bonus tool computes withholding on a single payment — withholding is not the final tax, because every payment is reconciled with everything else on the annual return. Third, which income the tool wants: the bracket and take-home tools take gross salary and subtract the standard deduction themselves, the federal income tax tool takes taxable income that is already net of deductions, and the quarterly tool takes expected AGI before the half-SE deduction, which it computes and subtracts. Entering the wrong one double-counts a deduction or skips it. Every worked example on this site is computed at build time by the same engine that runs the calculator on the page, so the documentation and the tool cannot silently disagree; if a bracket or deduction in the data file changed, the copy would change with it.

Guides

The calculators compute; the guides explain the mechanism behind them, with every figure drawn from the same data file and engine:

• How Tax Brackets Actually Work — marginal versus effective rates, why the standard deduction comes off first, and a numeric proof that a raise into a new bracket cannot lower take-home pay.
• 2026 Federal Tax Brackets — the 2026 tables by filing status, the standard deductions, and the bracket-by-bracket change from the prior year, computed.
• What OBBBA Changes on Your 2026 Tax Return — the senior, SALT, car-loan, standard-deduction, and charitable provisions, what expires when, and how current the figures are.
• Self-Employment Tax, Explained — both halves of Social Security and Medicare, the wage base, the deductible half, and the quarterly payment rhythm, traced end to end.

All of them are collected on the guides index. For the formulas and sources behind every tool, see the methodology page; for what the results are and are not, the disclaimer.

Frequently asked questions

Do these calculators send my numbers anywhere?

No. Every calculator runs entirely in your browser — the computation happens on your device, and nothing you enter is transmitted or stored. There is no account, no sign-in, and no cost.

Which tax year do the calculators use?

The tools that depend on the tax-year tables — bracket, federal income tax, take-home pay, bonus, self-employment, quarterly, capital gains, crypto capital gains, and tips and overtime — default to 2026 and offer a year selector covering 2025 and 2026. All year-dependent constants — bracket thresholds, standard deductions, the Social Security wage base, Medicare thresholds — live in one data file keyed by tax year, so choosing a year switches every figure together. The 2026 deduction tools model that year only, and the MAGI, hourly-to-salary, and sales-tax tools have no year selector because no tax-year constant enters their formulas.

Why does my result differ from my paycheck or my filed return?

Because the tools model the federal core only: brackets, the standard deduction, and FICA. A real paycheck also reflects state and local withholding, W-4 elections, benefit premiums, and other deductions; a filed return may include credits, itemized deductions, and other income the calculator never saw. Treat each result as the federal floor of the picture, not the whole of it.

Does any tool cover married filing separately?

The ordinary-income tools — bracket, federal income tax, take-home pay, and quarterly — model single, married filing jointly, and head of household only. Married filing separately appears where its rules differ enough to matter: the capital-gains calculators and the 2026 deduction tools. It is never assumed silently elsewhere.

Can I file my return from these figures?

No. Every result is a planning estimate computed by documented formulas from the numbers you enter; your actual liability is determined when you file, under the rules and facts that apply to you. Verify consequential numbers against current IRS publications and consult a qualified tax professional.

Not tax advice: these calculators provide federal-only planning estimates using the standard deduction — no state or local taxes, credits, or itemized deductions. Your actual liability is determined when you file; consult a tax professional. Everything is processed locally in your browser and never transmitted. See the methodology page and the disclaimer.