Take Home Pay Calculator

The 2026 brackets stay at seven rates (10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, 37%), with cutoffs lifted for inflation from 2025. For a single filer the 10% rate runs to $12,400, then 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, 24% to $201,775, 32% to $256,225, 35% to $640,600, and 37% above that. Married-filing-jointly brackets are roughly double the single thresholds across the first six bands, and head-of-household sits between single and MFJ in the lower bands. These are marginal rates, not flat: a $100,000 single salary does not pay 22% on the whole amount, only on the slice above $50,400. The standard deduction for 2026 is $16,100 single, $32,200 MFJ, $24,150 head-of-household, and that subtracts off the top before any bracket math runs.

FICA (the Federal Insurance Contributions Act) is the payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. The employee share is 7.65% of wages, split into 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare. Your employer matches that same 7.65%, so the IRS collects 15.3% total on every dollar of wages, but you only see the 7.65% on your paystub. FICA is taken straight off wages with no standard deduction, no brackets, and no allowances, which is why even a part-timer earning $15,000 a year owes about $1,148 in FICA while owing $0 in federal income tax. Self-employed workers pay both halves of FICA as self-employment tax on Schedule SE.

The Social Security tax (the 6.2% portion of FICA) only applies to the first chunk of annual wages each year. The 2026 cap is $184,500, up from $176,100 in 2025. Once your wages cross the cap, the Social Security tax stops for the rest of the year, capping the worker contribution at $11,439. Medicare has no wage cap, so the 1.45% keeps coming out of every paycheck regardless of how high your income goes.

The 0.9% Additional Medicare tax is an Affordable Care Act surtax that applies to wages above $200,000 for single filers, $250,000 for married filing jointly, and $125,000 for married filing separately. The thresholds are not indexed for inflation, so they have stayed at the same dollar amounts since 2013 and more workers cross them every year. Your employer is required to start withholding the extra 0.9% on any wages above $200,000 within a single calendar year, regardless of your filing status. If you are MFJ and your individual wages stay below $200,000 but your household wages combined cross $250,000, you reconcile the difference on Form 8959 at tax time. The effective top employee Medicare rate above the threshold is 2.35% (1.45% + 0.9%).

There is no federal floor on state income tax, so the range across the 50 states is enormous. Nine states have no state income tax at all (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, Wyoming, and New Hampshire as of 2025, which finished phasing out its interest-and-dividends tax). New Hampshire still has zero tax on wage income. At the other end, California's top marginal rate hits 13.3% on income above about $1 million, and New York City layers a city income tax on top of the state's 10.9% top rate. Most states sit between 3% and 7%. This calculator uses a single flat rate as a simple estimate because true state tax is bracketed (and sometimes layered with local tax), so look up your actual state's effective rate for your income band rather than copying a top marginal rate that does not apply to you.