Take-Home Pay Calculator

Where Your Paycheck Actually Goes

The deduction stack, in order

Pre-tax 401(k) and HSA come off the top, shrinking taxable income for federal (and most state) purposes — a 6% contribution at a 22% marginal rate 'costs' only about 4.4% of take-home. FICA follows: 6.2% Social Security up to the $176,100 wage base (2025), then it simply stops — high earners see a mid-year 'raise' when they cross it — plus 1.45% Medicare uncapped, with an extra 0.9% past $200K. Federal brackets apply after the standard deduction; state rules vary from zero (nine states) to California's 13.3% top rate.

Why your paystub disagrees with this calculator

Withholding is a per-paycheck estimate of the annual tax; this calculator computes the annual truth. Bonuses withheld at a flat 22%, mid-year raises, and W-4 settings all make individual checks deviate. Health insurance premiums (pre-tax, often $100–400/month), HSA/FSA deposits, and local income taxes (NYC ~3–3.9%, various Ohio and Pennsylvania municipalities) are the usual missing lines. The annual reconciliation is your tax return — refunds are just withholding overshooting.

The comparison trap in salary negotiation

Cross-state offers can't be compared on gross salary: $110K in Austin (0% state) nets roughly what $122–125K nets in Los Angeles. Layer in cost of living and employer 401(k) match differences and gross salary becomes almost the least informative number in the offer. Running both offers through take-home math with local rates is the ten-minute exercise that prevents six-figure mistakes.

Take-home across the map: same salary, five states

An $85,000 single filer with 6% going to a traditional 401(k) keeps a noticeably different paycheck depending on the state line. Federal tax and FICA are identical everywhere; the state row does all the moving.

The spread — roughly $4,800 a year between Texas and California on this profile — is real money, but read it with two footnotes. Zero-income-tax states recover revenue elsewhere (Texas property taxes run nearly double California's effective rate), and city taxes stack on top in a few places: NYC adds ~3.1–3.9%, and various Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Missouri municipalities take 1–3%. Cross-state offer comparisons need the whole tax picture plus housing, not just the paycheck line.

The order of operations on your paystub

Deductions apply in a sequence, and the sequence is why pre-tax benefits punch above their sticker price. Section 125 "cafeteria plan" items — health, dental, and vision premiums, FSA and HSA payroll contributions — come out before both income tax and FICA, making them the most tax-efficient dollars on the stub: a $200/month health premium at a 22% bracket plus 7.65% FICA really costs about $141 of take-home. Traditional 401(k) deferrals come out before income tax but after FICA — you still pay Social Security and Medicare on them, a detail this calculator models correctly and most people never notice. Roth 401(k) and after-tax items come out of fully taxed pay. Then withholding is computed on what remains. The practical use of knowing the order: when comparing benefit elections, an HSA dollar beats a 401(k) dollar beats a Roth dollar in immediate tax terms, which is exactly why the standard optimization sequence runs employer-match-first, then HSA, then back to the 401(k).

What people get wrong

• Judging a raise or offer by gross salary. Marginal taxes, state lines, and benefit costs mean two $95K offers can differ by $6K+ in actual deposit. Run both through the full stack before choosing.
• Confusing withholding with tax. The paycheck deduction is an estimate; the tax return is the truth. Persistent big refunds or bills mean the W-4 needs tuning, not that the tax law changed.
• Forgetting the Social Security cap mid-year. Past $176,100 of 2025 wages, the 6.2% stops and checks grow — then shrink again every January. Budgeting off the inflated Q4 check is a classic new-high-earner mistake.
• Ignoring the extra Medicare tax. Employers must withhold the additional 0.9% above $200K of wages regardless of filing status, but the actual tax depends on joint income — dual-earner couples under $200K each can owe it at filing with nothing withheld.

Tuning your withholding to your life

The calculator shows the annual truth; the W-4 controls how that truth arrives, and three profiles cover most tuning needs. Dual-income couples are the chronic under-withholders: each employer computes as if its paycheck is the household's only income, doubling up the standard deduction and low brackets — Step 2 of the W-4 (check the box at both jobs when incomes are similar, or use the worksheet when they aren't) exists solely to fix this, and skipping it is the most common source of four-figure April bills. Parents and credit-claimers over-withhold by default when Step 3 sits empty: entering $2,000 per qualifying child spreads the credit into every paycheck instead of lending it interest-free until spring. And side-income earners have the quietest lever on the form — line 4(c) adds a flat extra dollar amount per check, which covers gig or investment income without the quarterly estimated-payment ritual. The meta-rule: revisit the W-4 at every life event (marriage, birth, second job, big raise) and once each January, because withholding tables shift annually even when nothing about you changed. Fifteen minutes with the IRS estimator and your latest paystub converts refund-season surprises into a number you chose on purpose.

Take-home as a budgeting foundation

Every serious budget framework keys off net pay, not gross, and the translation matters more than the framework. The popular 50/30/20 split (needs/wants/savings) applied to gross income overspends by exactly your tax rate; applied to this calculator's take-home figure it fits reality. One refinement earns its keep for 401(k) savers: your paycheck already excludes retirement contributions, so the "20% savings" bucket is partly pre-satisfied — a 6% traditional contribution plus 14% of net covers the target without double-counting. The per-paycheck figure is the practical unit: rent due monthly against biweekly pay creates the famous two three-paycheck months per year, which disciplined budgeters treat as scheduled windfalls for the emergency fund rather than found money. Whatever the system, the input it needs is the number this page computes — which is why the take-home calculation, mundane as it is, sits upstream of every other financial decision on this site.

Reading a job offer's real hourly rate

One more translation this calculator enables: dividing annual take-home by honest annual hours converts any offer into an after-tax hourly wage — the single most comparable number across salaried, hourly, and contract offers. A $95K salaried role netting $70K at a real 47-hour week pays $28.65/hour after tax; a $45/hour contract with self-employment tax and unpaid benefits may or may not beat it once modeled honestly. Contractors add ~7.65% employer-side FICA, health premiums at unsubsidized rates, and zero paid leave to their side of the ledger — the standard rule that a contract rate needs to run 25–40% above a salary's nominal hourly equivalent falls straight out of that arithmetic. Running both offers through this lens takes ten minutes and reorders more decisions than any other comparison on the page.

Where the numbers come from

Federal brackets and standard deductions are the 2025 figures from IRS Revenue Procedure 2024-40; FICA rates and the $176,100 Social Security wage base are set annually by SSA. Withholding mechanics follow Publication 15-T and the 2020-redesign W-4. The Section 125 pre-FICA treatment of cafeteria-plan benefits is IRC §125; the 401(k)-pays-FICA rule is §3121(v). State figures in the table are effective rates for this income profile computed from each state's 2025 schedules — flat-tax states apply their single rate above their deduction, progressive states blend. Local wage taxes, SDI (California's 1.2%, New Jersey's family-leave insurance), and other state-specific payroll items are the usual residual gaps between this estimate and a real stub.

Frequently asked questions

Which states have no income tax?

Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming (Washington taxes high capital gains; New Hampshire's interest/dividend tax ended in 2025). Enter 0% for these — but note property and sales taxes often partially compensate.

Does contributing to a 401(k) really lower my taxes?

Traditional contributions, yes — they're invisible to federal income tax now (not FICA). Roth 401(k) contributions come after tax with no current savings. This calculator models traditional; Roth take-home equals setting 401(k) to 0% and then subtracting your contribution.

Why did my paycheck jump late in the year?

Almost certainly the Social Security wage base — after $176,100 of earnings (2025), that 6.2% deduction stops for the rest of the year, resuming each January.

Why is my bonus taxed so much more than my paycheck?

It usually isn't — it's withheld more. Supplemental wages get a flat 22% federal withholding (37% above $1M) plus FICA and state, which can exceed your normal per-check rate. At filing, bonus income just joins ordinary income; over-withholding comes back as refund. The bonus 'tax' most people notice is a withholding artifact.

How do pre-tax commuter and dependent-care benefits affect take-home?

Both reduce taxable wages like health premiums do: commuter benefits up to $325/month (2025) for transit and parking, dependent-care FSA up to $5,000/year household. Each dollar routed there saves your marginal rate plus, for most items, FICA — free money for expenses you were paying anyway.