Paycheck Calculator (US)

Your paycheck is not your salary. Federal income tax, Social Security (6.2%), Medicare (1.45%), and state income tax can consume 25–40% of your gross pay. If you contribute to a 401(k), health insurance or HSA, those pre-tax deductions reduce your taxable income but also shrink your take-home further.

This calculator estimates your net paycheck for all 50 US states using 2026 federal tax brackets, the 2026 $184,500 Social Security wage base, and your chosen state's income tax, worked out from its 2026 brackets or flat rate after the state's own standard deduction, exemption or tax-free threshold (Arkansas, which taxes most earners from separate tables, uses its top rate). Enter your gross salary, filing status, state, and 401(k) contribution percentage, and see your take-home by pay period.

Payroll tax comes out alongside income tax but is worked out completely differently, and it catches people out because it doesn't follow the brackets. The employee share is 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare (7.65% combined), and it applies from the first dollar earned, with no equivalent of the standard deduction.

On a $75,000 salary that is $4,650 of Social Security and $1,087.50 of Medicare, $5,737.50 in total. Your employer pays the same again on your behalf, which is why the combined burden is often described as 15.3% and why the self-employed pay both halves.

• Social Security stops at a wage cap: $184,500 for 2026. Above it the 6.2% no longer applies, so this element of payroll tax becomes regressive: at $250,000 it works out at about 4.6% of pay rather than 6.2%.
• Medicare has no cap, and an additional 0.9% applies to wages above $200,000 for single filers and $250,000 for joint filers.
• Pre-tax retirement contributions reduce income tax but not Social Security or Medicare. Health premiums deducted under a Section 125 plan generally do reduce both.

Take-home pay reflects several layers of deduction applied to different bases, which is why estimating it as a simple fraction of salary is unreliable. Income tax is charged on gross less pre-tax deductions and the standard deduction; FICA is charged on gross less only certain pre-tax benefits; state tax has its own rules and its own base.

The practical consequence is that a change to one line does not move take-home by the amount you might expect. Increasing a 401(k) contribution by $100 reduces take-home by less than $100, because the contribution avoids income tax, but by more than the income-tax saving alone would suggest, because it does not avoid FICA.

• How often you're paid matters. Semi-monthly gives 24 paychecks a year and bi-weekly gives 26, so the same salary gives different amounts per paycheck.
• Bonuses are often withheld at a flat supplemental rate, which is a withholding rule rather than a tax rate. Any over-withholding is sorted out when you file your return.
• State and local treatment varies widely, including states with no income tax at all. The state figure here is worked out from each state's 2026 brackets or flat rate with its own deduction and exemption, but local income taxes, state payroll deductions such as disability insurance, and most credits are left out, so it is still an estimate.