Gross salary is not your paycheck. This calculator applies the official 2026 IRS brackets (Rev. Proc. 2025-32), the standard deduction, Social Security/Medicare and your state's flat estimate to show real take-home pay.
Taxable income = gross − standard deduction ($16,100 single / $32,200 joint in 2026). Federal tax accrues bracket by bracket. FICA = 6.2% Social Security (capped at $184,500) + 1.45% Medicare + 0.9% surtax above $200k/$250k. State tax is entered as a flat % — check your state's rate (0% in TX, FL, NV, WA…; up to ~10% in CA).
| Gross pay | Take-home per year | Take-home per month |
|---|---|---|
| 40,000 | $34,940 | $2,911.67 |
| 60,000 | $52,410 | $4,367.5 |
| 80,000 | $69,880 | $5,823.33 |
| 120,000 | $104,820 | $8,735 |
| 160,000 | $139,760 | $11,646.67 |
Every number above is computed by the same in-browser engine as the calculator — nothing is hardcoded.
The calculation follows the official 2026 tables from Rev. Proc. 2025-32 in four steps. First, the standard deduction comes off gross: $16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household. Second, the remaining taxable income fills the brackets in order, single filers pay 10 percent up to $12,400, 12 percent to $50,400, 22 percent to $105,700, 24 percent to $201,775, 32 percent to $256,225, 35 percent to $640,600, and 37 percent above. Each dollar is taxed only at its own bracket rate, so crossing into 22 percent never retroactively raises tax on the income below. Third, FICA: 6.2 percent Social Security on wages up to the $184,500 base, 1.45 percent Medicare on everything, and 0.9 percent additional Medicare on wages above $200,000, or $250,000 joint. Fourth, the flat state percentage you enter is applied. The marginal-versus-effective distinction falls out naturally: a single filer at $80,000 pays roughly $8,770 of federal tax, an 11 percent effective rate, despite sitting in the 22 percent bracket, because the first $50,400 of taxable income was taxed at 10 and 12 percent.
The marginal rate is what the next dollar earns and loses; the effective rate is total tax divided by gross income, and the two diverge sharply in a bracketed system. A single filer at $80,000 in 2026 has an effective federal rate near 11 percent but a 22 percent marginal rate. That gap causes the most persistent salary myth: the fear that a raise pushes you into a higher bracket and leaves you with less money. It cannot happen. Only income above a threshold is taxed at the higher rate, so a $5,000 raise taxed at 22 percent still nets about $3,900 before FICA and state tax, always more than declining it. Bracket knowledge is useful at the edges: the raise that crosses the $105,700 single threshold starts losing 24 cents per dollar instead of 22, and the $184,500 Social Security wage base means high earners see FICA drop late in the year. When negotiating or comparing offers across states, compute effective rates on both with this calculator; a $95,000 offer in Texas can beat $105,000 in California after tax.
This tool models the tax code cleanly; payroll models your life, and the main gaps run in the taxpayer-favorable direction. Pre-tax deductions, 401k deferrals, health premiums, HSA and FSA contributions, reduce taxable wages before brackets apply, so actual withholding is lower than shown here. Dependents cut tax directly through the child tax credit, up to $2,000 per qualifying child in 2026 with a partially refundable portion, and payroll W-4 entries spread that across paychecks. Itemizers with large mortgage interest, state taxes up to the SALT cap, or charitable giving may deduct more than the standard deduction, again lowering real tax. Withholding mechanics add noise the other way: the percentage method, your W-4 elections, and irregular pay such as bonuses, withheld at a flat 22 percent supplemental rate, can make individual paychecks look wrong even when the annual total lands close. Treat the output as a conservative upper-bound estimate of tax, useful for comparing offers, states and filing statuses, then reconcile against your actual pay stub and prior-year return.
Total federal tax ÷ gross income — always lower than your marginal (top) bracket. A $80k single filer in 2026 is in the 22% bracket but pays ~11% effective.
This tool doesn't model 401(k) pre-tax contributions, HSA, dependents or itemizing — all of which lower taxable income further. Treat the result as a conservative estimate.
Traditional 401k contributions skip federal income tax and Medicare-level FICA still applies, but the tax saving equals your marginal bracket. A single filer at $80,000 in 2026 sits in the 22 percent bracket, so deferring $1,000 per paycheck-month lowers federal tax by $220 and take-home falls by about $780, while $1,000 still grows in the account. Add an employer match of 50 percent and the effective immediate return is roughly 91 cents per dollar deferred. The 2026 employee limit is $24,500, or $32,500 at age 50 or older. This calculator does not model deferrals, which is why the FAQ guidance calls its output conservative: real take-home for contributors runs higher than shown, because taxable income is lower than gross. To estimate manually, reduce the gross input by your annual deferral and re-run; the marginal bracket on the reduced figure may also drop, compounding the effect at bracket edges.
Nine states levy no broad wage income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming, plus New Hampshire, which taxes only interest and dividends and is phasing that out. Set the state field to 0 for these. High-tax states run the other way: California reaches 13.3 percent at top incomes, Hawaii 11 percent, New York State up to about 10.9 percent before New York City adds up to 3.9 percent more for residents of the five boroughs. Most states sit between 3 and 6 percent, and several are flat-rate, such as Illinois at 4.95 percent, Colorado near 4.4 percent, and Pennsylvania at 3.07 percent, which makes the flat estimate field unusually accurate there. Check the marginal top rate that applies to your income, not the headline rate: a Georgia earner at $80,000 pays far less than the top bracket suggests because the rate applies only to income above each threshold.
No, and the gap is large. Self-employed income owes the full 15.3 percent FICA, both employee and employer halves, called self-employment tax, on net earnings above $400, versus the 7.65 percent this calculator deducts for W-2 workers. The partial offsets: you deduct half of the self-employment tax from adjusted gross income, and net earnings above the Social Security wage base of $184,500 in 2026 owe only the 2.9 percent Medicare portion plus the 0.9 percent additional Medicare tax over thresholds. A rough planning rule for freelancers is to reserve 25 to 30 percent of net income for all taxes in most states. To approximate with this tool, raise the state percent field to bundle your extra SE tax, or better, use the freelance rate calculator, which builds the gross-up in. Estimated taxes are due quarterly, April, June, September and January, and missing them adds penalties on top of the tax itself.