Take-Home Pay Calculator

Read the table from the bottom and the two rates on the result stop conflicting: the last slice sets the marginal rate, while every slice below it — and the $16,100 the standard deduction removed before the first bracket — is what pulls the overall rate down. Every figure on this page is computed at build time by the same tested engine as the calculator above, so the copy cannot drift from the tool.

What the calculator computes, line by line

The model is short enough to state in full, and knowing it tells you which input moves which line of the result:

1. Pre-tax retirement. The optional percentage is applied to gross salary and set aside first. It leaves your paycheck, but it is not tax, so it appears on its own line.
2. Taxable income = gross − pre-tax retirement − the standard deduction for your filing status ($16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household for 2026), floored at zero. A salary below the deduction produces no federal income tax at all — though FICA still applies to every dollar.
3. Federal income tax runs taxable income through the 2026 brackets for your status, slice by slice; the last slice reached is the marginal rate.
4. Social Security is 6.2% of gross wages — not of taxable income — up to the $184,500 wage base, after which it stops.
5. Medicare is 1.45% of all gross wages with no cap, plus the 0.9% Additional Medicare surtax on wages above the $200,000 withholding threshold. The result box folds the surtax into the Medicare line.
6. Take-home = gross − pre-tax retirement − the federal taxes above. The monthly figure divides by 12 and the per-paycheck figure by 26 biweekly periods; the "overall" rate divides all federal taxes by gross salary.

The inputs the form does not ask for tell you what it cannot see. It never asks for a state, because state and local income taxes are outside the model. It never asks about dependents, credits, itemized deductions, or benefit premiums, because none of those are modeled either. The output is arithmetic on what you entered, not a judgment about anything you did not.

Three more filers, same engine

One example is one point. The table adds three filers chosen to exercise different parts of the model: a joint return with a retirement contribution, a head-of-household filer at a lower salary, and a single filer far enough up the scale to reach both FICA ceilings. All four are 2026 figures from the engine.

Filer B — married filing jointly, $150,000, 6% pre-tax 401(k). The contribution sets aside $9,000 before anything is taxed, and the joint standard deduction of $32,200 takes taxable income to $108,800. Run the same salary with no contribution and federal income tax is $15,340.00 instead of $13,360.00 — $1,980.00 less, which is exactly $9,000 × 22%, the marginal rate the contribution came out of. Social Security and Medicare are $11,475.00 in both runs, because FICA is charged on gross wages and the 401(k) never touches it. Take-home is $116,165.00 with the contribution and $123,185.00 without: the $9,000 set aside cost $7,020.00 of take-home, and the rest is income tax not paid this year.

Filer C — head of household, $62,000. The head-of-household standard deduction ($24,150) is larger than the single figure and its bottom brackets reach higher — the 12% rate runs to $67,450 of taxable income against $50,400 for a single filer — so taxable income is $37,850 and the last dollar lands in the 12% bracket. Federal income tax is $4,188.00; FICA, which the model computes without regard to filing status, adds $4,743.00. Look at the proportions: at this salary FICA is the larger of the two, and the overall federal rate of 14.4% owes more to the flat payroll rates than to the brackets. Take-home is $53,069.00, or $4,422.42 a month.

Filer D — single, $250,000. Two ceilings appear that the other filers never reach. Social Security stops at the $184,500 wage base, so the $65,500 of wages above it carry none and the line is $11,439.00 — the same figure it would be at any higher 2026 salary. Medicare has no cap ($3,625.00), and the $50,000 of wages above the $200,000 withholding threshold pick up the 0.9% surtax, another $450.00. Federal income tax is $51,304.00 with the last dollar in the 32% bracket, yet the overall federal rate is 26.73% — a gap of 5.27 points, against 2.74 for filer A. The gap widens because more of the income sits in brackets below the marginal one, and because Social Security stopped growing at the wage base. Take-home is $183,182.00.

Your bracket is not your bite

Being "in the 22% bracket" does not mean losing 22% of your salary. Brackets are marginal: the first slice of taxable income is taxed at 10%, the next at 12%, and only the top slice at your bracket rate. That is why the overall federal bite for filer A is 19.26% — and why a raise never leaves you with less take-home pay through the bracket math. The guide proves that last point with a computed raise across a bracket threshold; the Tax Bracket Calculator shows the slices for any salary, and the Federal Income Tax Calculator starts from taxable income when you already know it.

The overall rate this page reports is not the effective rate a bracket page shows. It divides all federal taxes, FICA included, by gross salary; a bracket page divides income tax alone by taxable income. For filer A the income-tax-only figure is 14.33% against 19.26% here, and neither is wrong — they answer different questions. Compare like with like.

Reading a raise: the keep rate

The comparison tool's headline figure is the keep rate: of each extra gross dollar in scenario B, the share that survives as take-home. For the $85,000 → $95,000 raise above (single, 2026), the engine classifies the change as a pure raise — salary moved and nothing else did — and reports $7,035.00 more take-home a year, $586.25 a month, a keep rate of 70.35%. Federal taxes took the other $2,965.00 of the $10,000.

There is no mystery in that percentage. This raise stays inside the 22% bracket and below the Social Security wage base, so every extra dollar pays the marginal income-tax rate plus both FICA rates: 22 + 6.2 + 1.45 = 29.65%, leaving 70.35% — the keep rate to the decimal. When a raise crosses a bracket edge, passes the wage base, or reaches the Additional Medicare threshold, the extra dollars carry two prices and the simple sum no longer applies; the tool computes the blend exactly either way. One misreading to avoid: the keep rate is the share of the change you keep, not the share of your whole salary — for filer A the whole-salary figure is 80.74%.

A status change, and why the keep rate disappears

Put the same $85,000 salary in both scenarios (2026) and switch scenario B to married filing jointly. The joint standard deduction of $32,200 replaces the single $16,100, taxable income falls to $52,800, and the joint 12% bracket runs to $100,800 of taxable income against $50,400 for a single filer, so the last dollar lands in the 12% bracket instead of 22%. Federal income tax drops from $9,870.00 to $5,840.00; FICA does not move, because filing status is not one of its inputs. Take-home rises $4,030.00 a year. The engine classifies this as a same-salary gain and shows no keep rate: the rate divides the take-home change by the gross change, and with no gross change there is nothing to divide by. That blank is deliberate.

Combine the two — the $10,000 raise and the status change together, still 2026 — and the take-home difference is $12,065.00, more than the raise itself. Dividing that by the gross change would print 120.65%, a "keep rate" above 100% that says nothing true about the raise. The engine labels such cases a combined change, reports the dollar difference, and withholds the percentage. To read the keep rate of a raise, change only the salary between the two scenarios.

The one lever inside the form

A pre-tax 401(k) contribution is the only input on the form that changes your tax without changing your salary, and the engine prices it exactly. Filer A at 6%: $5,100 is set aside, taxable income falls from $68,900 to $63,800, and federal income tax falls from $9,870.00 to $8,748.00 — $1,122.00 less, the contribution times the 22% marginal rate it came out of. Take-home drops by $3,978.00, not by the full $5,100; the difference is income tax not paid this year. FICA is charged on gross wages before the contribution and is identical in both runs, which is why the Social Security and Medicare lines do not move when you type a percentage. Filer B in the table shows the same mechanism on a joint return.

One reading to avoid: given these two scenarios, the comparison tool classifies the result as a same-salary reduction in take-home of $3,978.00 a year. It measures cash that reaches you, not cash you kept in a retirement account, and it is correct on its own terms. Whether a deferral is worthwhile depends on facts the model does not hold, and this page does not attempt that judgment.

What this calculator leaves out

The result is the federal core of a paycheck. The following are real, and excluded by design rather than estimated badly:

• State and local income taxes — the form has no state field because the model has no state rules; every take-home figure here is before any of them.
• Actual withholding — the figures are annual liability spread evenly across pay periods, not a run of the withholding tables. W-4 elections, a mid-year raise, or a bonus can make any single check differ; the difference reconciles when you file.
• Credits and itemized deductions — not modeled. The standard deduction is always applied, so a filer who itemizes or qualifies for credits will see a different liability on the return.
• Other pre-tax and post-tax deductions — benefit premiums and every deduction other than the single retirement percentage are outside the model.
• Married filing separately — the ordinary-income tools on this site model single, married filing jointly, and head of household only.
• Bonuses and self-employment income — a bonus is withheld under the flat supplemental method (Bonus Tax Calculator), and self-employment earnings carry both halves of Social Security and Medicare (Self-Employment Tax Calculator). Neither is a salary, and this page does not price them.
• Tax years not yet published — the year selector offers only the years in the site's data file. When the IRS publishes the next year's figures, that file gains an entry and every calculator updates together.

The full list of computations, sources, and exclusions is on the methodology page; the site's explainers are collected under Guides, starting with How Tax Brackets Actually Work.

Frequently asked questions

Not tax advice: a planning estimate using the standard deduction and federal taxes only — no state or local income tax, no credits, no itemizing, no other deductions. Your actual liability is determined when you file; consult a tax professional for your situation. Values are processed locally in your browser and never transmitted. See the methodology page and the disclaimer.