Paycheck Calculator

💰What this paycheck calculator does

I built this paycheck calculator for one job: you tell me what you earn, and I show you what will actually land in your bank account. It is a free paycheck calculator with no sign-up and nowhere to send your numbers — every keystroke stays in your browser. People find this page looking for an online paycheck calculator, a paycheck calc, a pay check calculator or a paycheck estimator; whatever the label, the question underneath is always the same — how much will my paycheck be? — and the honest answer takes more than dividing a salary by 26. It works the same whether you use it as a salary paycheck calculator or for hourly wages — and if you run payroll rather than receive it, you would call the same machinery a payroll calculator; the math is identical, only the chair you sit in changes.

To calculate paycheck amounts properly I need five things: your gross pay, your pay frequency, your filing status, your state, and the deductions you choose. Give me those and I return your estimated net pay per paycheck and per year, your federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, your state income tax, your effective tax rate, and a gross to net calculator-style breakdown table where every line of the journey from gross to net is visible. Salary earners can type an annual figure; hourly workers can enter a week’s or a shift’s pay and add overtime below.

One promise before we start: every rate on this page is dated. The federal figures are the IRS brackets and standard deductions for 2025 and 2026, the FICA wage base is the Social Security Administration’s, and the state table further down uses each state’s published 2026 rates. When the IRS and the states publish new numbers each year, I refresh this page — a paycheck estimator running on last year’s tables is worse than useless, because it looks precise while being wrong.

🧮How I calculate your paycheck, step by step

Payroll departments do not tax one paycheck in isolation — they annualize. I use the same method the IRS prescribes in Publication 15-T: multiply this check’s gross by the number of pay periods in a year, compute a full year of tax on that annualized figure, then divide the tax back down to a single check. It is why a bonus or a heavy overtime week is withheld as if you earned that amount all year (more on that below).

My exact chain is: (1) annualize your gross pay, adding overtime; (2) subtract your pre-tax deductions — 401(k) percentage and health premiums — because those dollars are taxed later or never; (3) subtract the federal standard deduction for your filing status and run the rest through the progressive IRS brackets; (4) add FICA — Social Security and Medicare — which is figured on wages before the standard deduction; (5) apply your state’s own rates, brackets and standard deduction; (6) subtract everything, plus any post-tax deduction, and divide by your pay periods. Here it is on a real salary:

Worked example — $75,000 salary, filing single, 2026, Texas:

Notice the effective tax rate: 17.88% of gross, even though this salary reaches the 22% bracket. Only the top $8,500 of taxable income pays 22% — the slices below pay 10% and 12%. If your own paycheck looks different from my estimate, the usual suspects are your W-4 entries, a second job, or local taxes — state estimates vary by allowances and local rules, and I list every limitation honestly at the end of this guide.

🗺️The same $75,000 paycheck in Texas, Illinois and California

State tax is the single biggest reason two identical salaries produce different deposits, so let me run the exact same $75,000 single filer through three states I get asked about constantly. If you arrived here hunting for a texas paycheck calculator, an illinois paycheck calculator or a paycheck calculator texas comparison — this table is the answer, and the state selector above runs it for all 50 states plus DC:

Two lessons hide in that table. First, a flat tax is not automatically a low tax: Illinois’s single 4.95% rate on nearly every dollar beats California’s famous brackets at this income, because California’s first $59,498 of taxable income is taxed at 8% or less. Headline top rates mislead; the whole schedule is what matters. Second, where you work is worth real money — the Texas-to-Illinois gap here is $3,567.71 a year, about $137.22 per bi-weekly check, on identical work.

Nine states levy no income tax on wages at all: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. New Hampshire finished repealing its interest-and-dividends tax on January 1, 2025, and Washington taxes only capital gains, so neither touches a paycheck. Among the states that do tax wages, the patterns to know are: flat-rate states like Illinois, Pennsylvania (3.07%) and North Carolina (3.99% for 2026 — if you came here for an nc paycheck calculator, that single flat rate after a $12,750 standard deduction is the whole story) apply one rate after a modest deduction or exemption; graduated states like California, New York (top rate 10.9%) and New Jersey (10.75%) climb with income; and a handful — Colorado and North Dakota among them — simply start from your federal taxable income. My state table below lists all 51 jurisdictions with their 2026 method.

Three honest caveats. Local taxes sit on top of my state figures: New York City adds 3.078%–3.876% on top of New York State tax, Maryland’s counties add roughly 2.25%–3.2%, Pennsylvania municipalities typically add about 1%, and Indiana counties levy their own rates — the selector’s number is the state layer only; enter your own flat local rate in Advanced options and the estimate applies it to your pay after pre-tax deductions. Payroll taxes are not income taxes: California also withholds 1.3% of wages for State Disability Insurance (SDI), and a few states run smaller paid-leave payroll taxes. Two states tax your 401(k) going in: New Jersey and Pennsylvania do not exclude elective deferrals, so I add them back for those two states — your saving there comes only from the federal and FICA side.

📋State income taxes at a glance — 2026 rates, brackets and deductions

This is the dataset behind the selector: every state’s published method for 2026, with the standard deduction or personal exemption a single filer gets before rates apply. I re-verify it each year against the state departments of revenue and the Tax Foundation’s annual rate tables. Joint filers: in this estimator I double the single-filer deduction and bracket widths, which matches many states exactly and approximates the rest — one more reason to read my state numbers as estimates that vary by allowances and each state’s own joint schedule.

Sources: state departments of revenue withholding and rate publications for tax year 2026, cross-checked against the Tax Foundation, State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets, 2026. A few states also let you deduct some federal income tax (Alabama, Missouri, Oregon) — I do not model that, so my estimate for those states runs slightly high, never low.

🏦FICA: the Social Security and Medicare layer

FICA is the layer people forget because it never appears on a tax return — it is gone before you can argue with it. It is also the most mechanical part of my calculation, because it ignores the standard deduction entirely and taxes wages from the first dollar:

• Social Security — 6.2% on the first $184,500 of 2026 wages ($176,100 in 2025). The most anyone pays in 2026 is $11,439.00; after the cap, withholding simply stops mid-year, which is why high earners get a quiet raise every autumn.
• Medicare — 1.45% on every dollar of wages, with no cap, ever.
• Additional Medicare Tax — 0.9% on wages above $200,000 if you file single or head of household, $250,000 jointly, $125,000 married filing separately. Only you pay this one — your employer does not match it.

Your employer pays a matching 6.2% and 1.45% on top of your wages, which never shows on your stub but is part of the true cost of employing you. Pre-tax deductions shrink FICA as well as income tax in my model, matching how 401(k) deferrals and cafeteria-plan health premiums are treated: on the $75,000 Texas example, a 6% 401(k) contribution drops Social Security from $4,650.00 to $4,371.00 — a real, immediate saving most paycheck tools forget to mention.

🧾Federal brackets, the W-4, and why your stub may differ

For 2026 the federal single-filer brackets are 10% to $12,400, 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, 24% to $201,775, 32% to $256,225, 35% to $640,600 and 37% above, with a $16,100 standard deduction. My calculator runs your annualized pay through those brackets and the 2025 set (10% to $11,925, standard deduction $15,750) when you flip the tax-year toggle. That is the liability method — the cleanest way to estimate a steady paycheck.

Your employer’s withholding, though, follows your W-4, and that is where stubs drift from estimates. Claiming dependents on Step 3 of the W-4 reduces withholding; ticking the multiple-jobs box raises it; any extra amount you wrote on Step 4(c) comes straight off every check. A bonus paid on its own is usually withheld at a flat 22% federal rate, whatever your bracket. None of that changes what you ultimately owe — withholding is a prepayment, and the difference settles when you file — but it is why I label every number on this page an estimate and why state estimates vary by allowances too.

One 2026 wrinkle worth knowing: under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, qualified overtime premium pay — the extra “half” in time-and-a-half — is deductible on your federal return for 2025 through 2028, up to $12,500 filing single or $25,000 jointly, phasing out above $150,000 of income ($300,000 joint). It does not change your withholding during the year; it arrives as a smaller tax bill or a bigger refund the following spring. My estimator also taxes overtime as regular wages during the year — and the Advanced options can add this deduction, plus the matching tips, car-loan and senior deductions, to the annual estimate, the way the return will.

🌱Pre-tax deductions: the 401(k) lever on your paycheck

The 401(k) field above is the most powerful lever on this page, because a pre-tax contribution shrinks three taxes at once. Watch the $75,000 Texas salary when I set the contribution to 6%:

You put away $173.08 per check, your deposit falls by only $121.76, and the missing $51.32 is tax you simply never pay — $1,334.25 a year. Health insurance premiums paid through a cafeteria plan get the same triple escape (federal, FICA, and state in most states), and HSA contributions through an employer plan do too. The IRS caps employee 401(k) contributions at $24,500 for 2026, with catch-up room from age 50. Post-tax deductions — a Roth 401(k), union dues, a garnishment — work the opposite way: they come out after every tax, dollar for dollar, which is why I give them their own field.

⏱️Hourly pay, overtime and the weekly paycheck

If you are paid by the hour, this page doubles as an hourly paycheck calculator: set the frequency to weekly, enter one week’s base pay, and use the overtime fields for the extra hours. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, hours past 40 in a single workweek must be paid at least 1.5× your regular rate, and paycheck calculator hourly math has to annualize that whole check — base plus overtime — before taxing it:

The same logic powers a weekly paycheck calculator or a biweekly pay calculator view — my results card re-splits your annual net across all four schedules, so a weekly-paid worker can see the bi-weekly equivalent ($1,992.16 here) without re-typing anything. One caution: annualizing assumes every week looks like this one. A single overtime-heavy week is withheld as if you earned it all year, which over-withholds in that check; the excess comes back at filing time.

🔀Paycheck vs salary vs take-home pay: which calculator do I need?

Four of my calculators live in the same neighborhood, and I keep them deliberately separate because they answer different questions:

• This paycheck calculator — start here when your question is per-paycheck: “What will Friday’s deposit be?” It works from any gross pay figure and pay frequency, with your state, filing status and deductions in the mix. It is the only one of the four that models state tax properly, which matters if you are comparing a job offer across state lines — say, checking a salary calculator texas result against an Illinois offer.
• Salary Calculator — the converter. It translates between hourly, weekly, monthly and annual pay, which makes it the better gross pay calculator and hourly wage calculator when the question is “what is $30 an hour for a year?” rather than “what lands in my account?”
• Take-Home Pay Calculator — the annual framer. It starts from a yearly salary and applies federal tax and FICA to give your yearly, monthly and per-period take-home; net pay is its home turf, and it is the fastest of the four if state tax is not part of your question. Searches for a net pay calculator land on that page for the annual view and on this page for the per-check view — same dollars, different frame.
• Tax Calculator — the liability estimator. It answers “what will I owe the IRS for the year?” including filing-status detail the paycheck tools skip.
• Pay Calculator — the pay-structure tool, for overtime rules, pay-frequency conversions and what-if hours.

My honest routing advice: offer letter in hand, use this page. Negotiating an hourly rate, use the Salary Calculator. Planning a yearly budget, use Take-Home Pay. Worried about April, use the Tax Calculator. And if a New York offer is on the table, remember the selector gives you the state layer — a ny paycheck calculator question also carries New York City tax for residents, which I flag in the state section but do not add, because it depends on where you live, not just where you work; the same caution applies to nys paycheck calculator searches generally.

🧾Dependents, extra jobs, local tax, self-employment and the 2025–2028 deductions

The Advanced options above carry the rest of a real household’s tax picture, modelled the way the return treats it. Dependents: children under 17 earn the child tax credit — $2,200 per child, phased out by $50 for every $1,000 of income over $200,000 ($400,000 on a joint return) — and other dependents $500 each; the refundable part of the child credit (up to $1,700 per child, from 15% of earnings over $2,500) is included, so a low-income family’s federal line can go below zero. Itemizing: enter your itemized total and the estimate uses whichever is bigger — that, or your standard deduction including the extra age-65 amounts ($2,050 per person in 2026, $2,000 in 2025; $1,650 / $1,600 per spouse). Extra jobs and a spouse: second and third jobs share your one Social Security cap, while a spouse on a joint return gets their own — two $200,000 earners in 2026 owe $22,878 of Social Security between them, not the $11,439 a single pooled cap would suggest. Other income is taxed as income with no FICA taken out of it. Local tax: enter your city or county rate and it is applied to your pay after pre-tax deductions — the state layer above it still uses the state’s own brackets.

The 2025–2028 deductions (Schedule 1-A). For tax years 2025 through 2028, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act lets you deduct, on top of the standard or itemized deduction: qualified tips up to $25,000; the premium half of qualified overtime up to $12,500 ($25,000 joint); interest up to $10,000 on a loan for a new, US-assembled car bought for personal use (tick the eligibility box — the same tests Schedule 1-A applies); and $6,000 per person aged 65 or over, driven by the age boxes. Tips and overtime phase out over $150,000 of income ($300,000 joint) and are not available when filing separately; the car-loan deduction phases out over $100,000 ($200,000 joint). From 2026 there is one more: cash gifts to charity are deductible up to $1,000 ($2,000 joint) even when you take the standard deduction. None of these change withholding during the year — they settle when you file, which is why this estimator applies them to the annual figures. Per IRS Schedule 1-A, FS-2026-04 and IRC §170(p) for the charity deduction, checked October 2026.

Worked example. A married couple filing jointly in Texas in 2026 — $120,000 of wages plus a spouse’s $60,000, two children under 17, $10,000 of qualified tips, $3,000 of overtime premium, $4,000 of qualifying car-loan interest and $1,200 of charity cash gifts: the Schedule 1-A deductions total $17,000, taxable income lands at $129,600, federal tax is $13,536 after the $4,400 child credit, Social Security is $11,160 and Medicare is $2,610 — take-home $152,694. The W-4 helper under the results turns the same entries into a Step 3 dependents total of $4,400 and a Step 4(b) deductions figure of $18,200.

Self-employment and bonuses. Tick the self-employment box and the main income is treated as net self-employment earnings instead: 12.4% + 2.9% on 92.35% of it, with half of that tax taken off your income before the brackets; a second or third job stays on employee rules. A bonus is estimated the way payroll withholds it — the flat 22% federal supplemental rate (IRS Publication 15) plus FICA — shown separately under the results rather than folded into the annual figures.

⚠️What this paycheck estimator leaves out (honestly)

I would rather tell you the limits than let you discover them on a pay stub. This estimator models federal income tax (with the credits and deductions in Advanced options), FICA, one state’s income tax and a flat local rate with care, and it leaves these out on purpose:

• Exact local brackets — Advanced options take a single flat local rate; real local taxes (New York City, Maryland counties, Pennsylvania and Indiana localities, Ohio cities) run their own brackets, allowances and residency rules, and they follow your home address as often as your work address.
• Payroll taxes that are not income tax — California’s 1.3% SDI, Massachusetts paid-leave contributions, Washington’s long-term-care premium. Small, real, and not in my totals.
• Your exact per-paycheck withholding — the W-4 helper under the results gives you the Step 3 and Step 4 figures for your form, but your employer’s payroll tables, exempt status, garnishments and mid-year starts still move a real stub away from an annual estimate.
• Credits this estimator still skips — the earned income credit, education credits and the student-loan interest deduction are not modelled. Child credits, itemizing, the age-65 amounts and the 2025–2028 Schedule 1-A deductions are — in Advanced options.
• Timing effects — I spread the Social Security cap evenly across the year; in reality it bites per employer, per calendar year, and stops mid-year once you cross $184,500.

Use the result as what it is: a paycheck tax calculator estimate accurate enough to budget, compare job offers and sanity-check a stub — not a substitute for your payroll department or a tax professional when the decision is big.