Take Home Pay Calculator

This calculator estimates what actually lands in your account after tax and deductions, at whatever frequency you are paid. It also gives you the figures behind Steps 3 and 4 of a W-4. Enter the salary before anything is taken out, and the Final Pay Check line is the amount after everything.

Before-tax against after-tax income

When Americans state a salary they almost always mean the before-tax figure, called gross pay. That is the number on a mortgage application, the number that determines your tax bracket, and the number people compare when they talk about jobs, because it is the raw figure before federal tax, state tax, payroll tax, retirement contributions, and health premiums are applied, all of which differ from person to person.

For running a household, the more useful figure is after-tax income, sometimes called disposable or net income, because it is the money that actually arrives. Someone budgeting next month's rent needs the take-home number, not the salary. The gap between the two is wider than most people expect: on the default figures here, an $80,000 salary produces roughly $60,400 of take-home pay, so about a quarter of the headline number never reaches the bank.

Pay frequency

Bi-weekly and semi-monthly look alike and are not the same. Bi-weekly means every other week, which is 26 paychecks a year. Semi-monthly means twice a month, which is 24. On a bi-weekly schedule you receive two paychecks in ten months of the year and three in the other two, which is why bi-weekly earners often treat those two months as bonus months even though the annual total is identical.

Employees generally prefer being paid more often, and employers generally prefer the opposite because each payroll run costs money to process. Some states set minimum pay frequencies; federal law mainly requires that the schedule be predictable, so an employer cannot pay bi-weekly one month and monthly the next. None of this changes your tax bill. Pay frequency changes the size of each cheque and nothing else, which the second chart on this page shows directly.

Filing status

The status you choose sets both your bracket thresholds and your standard deduction. Most people use Single, Filing Jointly, or Head of Household. Head of Household requires you to be unmarried and to pay more than half the cost of keeping a home for a qualifying person; it carries a larger standard deduction and wider brackets than Single, so it is worth checking whether you qualify. Qualifying Surviving Spouse, still widely called Qualified Widow, is available for two years after a spouse's death if you have a dependent child, and it uses the joint brackets and deduction.

Married Filing Separately usually costs more and blocks several credits, so couples rarely choose it. It is worth evaluating your options rather than assuming, since a single person may qualify for a status that taxes them less.

The three kinds of deduction

The form separates deductions into three inputs because they behave differently.

Pretax deductions withheld come out of your pay before it is taxed: 401(k) contributions, your share of health insurance premiums, HSA contributions, union or uniform dues, and child support. These reduce the income that federal tax is calculated on.

Deductions not withheld are ones your employer knows nothing about but which still reduce taxable income, such as IRA contributions and student loan interest. You claim them on your return, and entering them here shows their effect on your true tax position.

Itemized deductions are the Schedule A items: qualified mortgage interest, state and local taxes up to the cap, charitable donations, and medical costs above 7.5% of AGI. You take either these or the standard deduction, whichever is larger. For 2026 the standard deduction is $16,100 filing single and $32,200 filing jointly.

The One Big Beautiful Bill, passed in 2025, added four more deductions that sit outside that choice, meaning you can claim them whether you itemize or not. All four apply to tax years 2025 through 2028 and expire after that unless extended:

• Tips. Up to $25,000 a year of qualified tips, phasing out above $150,000 of modified AGI, or $300,000 jointly.
• Overtime. Up to $12,500 a year of qualified overtime pay, or $25,000 for joint filers, with the same phase-out.
• Car loan interest. Up to $10,000 a year on a loan for a qualifying vehicle, phasing out above $100,000 of modified AGI, or $200,000 jointly.
• Seniors. An extra $6,000 for filers aged 65 and over, or $12,000 for a couple where both qualify, phasing out above $75,000 of modified AGI, or $150,000 jointly.

Income tax

Nearly every employer withholds tax from pay automatically, because the law requires it. Independent contractors and the self-employed have no employer doing this for them and must make quarterly estimated payments instead. Failing to pay is not a paperwork matter: tax evasion is a felony carrying up to five years in prison.

Federal income tax is progressive, so the rate climbs as income does, topping out at 37% for the highest earners. It is usually the largest single deduction on a payslip, and it is the biggest source of federal revenue, ahead of corporate income tax, payroll tax, and estate tax. Only the income inside each band is taxed at that band's rate, which is why your effective rate is always lower than your top rate. For a full-year picture including credits and refunds, use our Income Tax Calculator.

State income tax funds state governments, and unlike federal tax it is not universal. Most states operate a progressive system, California has the highest top rate at 13.30%, and a group of states apply a single flat rate: Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Utah. Seven states levy no income tax at all: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. New Hampshire has been phasing out its tax on interest and dividends, and Tennessee has already eliminated its equivalent. States also treat some income differently from the federal government, often taxing out-of-state municipal bond interest while exempting some or all pension income.

City or local income tax affects only about one American in ten. Where it exists it is usually concentrated in large cities, with New York City among the highest, and in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Maryland where local levies are common.

FICA tax

FICA, also called payroll tax, covers Social Security and Medicare. Everyone pays it on earned income. Employees pay half and the employer pays the other half; independent contractors pay both halves themselves, since they are simultaneously the employee and the employer. That doubling is a large part of why contract rates are higher than the equivalent salary, and it is a real cost rather than a bonus.

Social Security is charged at 6.20% from the employee and 6.20% from the employer, 12.40% in total, and it stops at an annual wage ceiling: $184,500 for 2026, up from $176,100 in 2025. Earnings above the ceiling pay no more Social Security tax, which is why high earners see their take-home rise partway through the year. Our Social Security Calculator covers what those contributions buy.

Medicare is charged at 1.45% each side, 2.90% in total, with no ceiling at all. Above $200,000 of wages, or $250,000 for joint filers, an extra 0.9% applies to the employee only, which the employer does not match.

One detail this calculator handles carefully: FICA is charged on your full salary. A 401(k) deferral lowers your income tax but not your Social Security and Medicare, so it does not shrink that part of the bill. Section 125 benefits such as health premiums and HSA contributions do escape FICA, which makes them quietly more efficient than a 401(k) dollar for dollar. Equally important, FICA is not deductible against your federal income tax as an employee, a point some paycheck calculators get wrong and which makes their federal line come out too low.

Take-home pay

Only once all of that is accounted for do you have a real take-home figure. It is worth knowing precisely, because people routinely overestimate what they can afford by budgeting against a pre-tax salary. A household planning around $80,000 when $60,400 arrives will feel the difference every month. Build the budget on the net number instead, and our Budget Calculator takes it from there.

How to increase a take-home paycheck

Earn more. The direct route is a raise, a promotion, or a bonus, which is a reasonable thing to ask for when your performance has clearly exceeded what was expected or the company has done well partly because of your work. Where internal increases are capped, changing employer is usually where the largest jumps happen; the biggest pay rises in most careers come from moving rather than staying. Our Salary Calculator converts between hourly, weekly, and annual figures.

Review your payroll deductions. Insurance is the usual place to find money. Someone healthy with no ongoing conditions may not need the most expensive plan on offer, and a couple where both employers provide cover should compare the two rather than defaulting to one. The difference can be several hundred dollars a month.

Use a flexible spending account. An FSA lets you set aside earnings before income tax for costs you were going to pay anyway, most commonly healthcare, dependent care, or adoption expenses. It does not increase the paycheck itself, but it means money you would have spent post-tax is spent pre-tax instead. The trade-off is the use-it-or-lose-it rule: unspent balances are generally forfeited at year end, subject to a limited carryover or grace period if your plan offers one, so contribute what you are confident of using.

Work overtime. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, covered non-exempt employees must be paid at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours over 40 in a week. Most employers pay exactly that minimum, though double time is not unusual. Exempt salaried employees generally receive nothing extra for the additional hours. The Time Card Calculator handles the hours side.

Cash out unused PTO. Many employers now roll vacation, sick leave, and personal days into a single paid time off allowance, and some will convert unused days into pay at year end. Where that is offered, accumulated days become a larger cheque.

Pause 401(k) contributions, carefully. Stopping retirement contributions raises take-home pay immediately and is a reasonable response to genuine financial difficulty. Keep contributing at least up to any employer match if you possibly can, because forgoing the match is turning down part of your compensation, and remember the increase is smaller than the contribution itself since the money becomes taxable.

Filling in the W-4

The W-4 is what tells your employer how much to withhold, and it no longer uses allowances. The current form asks for dollar figures instead, which is why the inputs here map onto it directly.

Step 1 is your name and filing status. Step 2 is for multiple jobs or a working spouse, and it is the step people skip most often. Step 3 is dependents: multiply children under 17 by the child tax credit and other dependents by $500, then enter the total. That amount reduces your withholding across the year rather than waiting for a refund. Step 4 covers everything else: (a) other income not from a job, such as interest or dividends, so tax on it is collected through payroll instead of arriving as a bill; (b) deductions beyond the standard deduction, which lowers withholding; and (c) any extra flat amount you want taken from each cheque.

Two moments make a W-4 worth redoing. One is marriage or divorce, since the status and the brackets both change. The other is any second income entering the household, because the shortfall from two employers each withholding in isolation is the most common reason for an unexpected April bill.

Aim for a small refund or a small balance due. A large refund is not a windfall; it is a year of interest-free lending to the government, and money you could have had in each paycheck instead. A large balance due can bring an underpayment penalty on top of the tax itself. Adjusting Step 4(c) by a few dollars a period is usually enough to land near zero.

Reading the result

This estimates your annual tax and spreads it evenly across the year, which is not identical to how an employer computes withholding from the IRS tables, so a real payslip will differ by a few dollars either way. The larger differences come from things a form cannot know: a mid-year raise, a bonus taxed at the supplemental rate, or a second job.

That last one matters most. Each employer withholds as though its wage were your only income, so two jobs paying $40,000 each withhold as two $40,000 earners rather than one $80,000 earner, and the shortfall arrives as a bill. Step 2 of the W-4 exists for exactly this, and Step 4(c) lets you add a fixed extra amount per period to close the gap.