Paycheck Calculator: Estimate Your Take-Home Pay

A paycheck is your gross pay minus every withholding line. The calculator works through them in order, annualising everything first and dividing by the number of paychecks only at the end.

• Wages: w = gross pay − pretax deductions
• Federal income tax: sum of (each income slice × its 2026 bracket rate) applied to w
• Social Security: 6.2% × min(w, $184,500) — the 2026 wage base caps it
• Medicare: 1.45% × w — no cap
• State income tax: w × (state rate ÷ 100) — flat-rate simplification
• Annual take-home: gross − pretax − federal − Social Security − Medicare − state
• Per paycheck: annual take-home ÷ paychecks per year

Sources: 2026 federal income tax brackets (single-filer schedule, as published by the IRS and used in this site's income tax calculator); IRS Publication 15 (2026), Employer's Tax Guide, for the 6.2% / 1.45% FICA rates and the $184,500 Social Security wage base.

Take $80,000 of annual gross pay, a Single filer, paid biweekly (26 paychecks), a 5% state tax rate and no pretax deductions:

• Federal tax (2026 brackets): $12,400 × 10% = $1,240; $38,000 × 12% = $4,560; $29,600 × 22% = $6,512 → $12,312
• Social Security: $80,000 × 6.2% = $4,960.00 (under the $184,500 wage base)
• Medicare: $80,000 × 1.45% = $1,160.00
• State tax: $80,000 × 5% = $4,000.00
• Annual take-home: $80,000 − $12,312 − $4,960 − $1,160 − $4,000 = $57,568
• Per paycheck: $57,568 ÷ 26 = $2,214.15

The effective tax rate is $22,432 ÷ $80,000 = 28.04% — the paycheck keeps about 72 cents of every dollar earned.

Step by step

1. Enter your annual gross pay. Use the full salary or wage figure before any deductions — the number on your offer letter.
2. Pick your pay frequency. Biweekly (every two weeks) is the most common in the US, but weekly, semi-monthly and monthly are all supported.
3. Choose your filing status. This version applies the single-filer federal schedule to every status — see the filing-status section below for why.
4. Add your state rate and pretax deductions. Enter 0 for the state rate if you live in a no-income-tax state, and add 401(k), HSA or health-premium deductions as pretax.
5. Press Calculate. Read the per-paycheck and annual breakdown, including the bracket-by-bracket federal math.

If you are comparing two job offers, convert hourly and weekly offers to a yearly figure first with a salary calculator, then paste the annual number here to see what each offer actually pays you.

Pay frequency changes the size of each paycheck, never the annual total. Splitting the same salary across more checks makes each one smaller; fewer, larger checks arrive less often but add up to the same yearly number. For a $52,000 salary:

Paychecks per year

Biweekly vs semi-monthly

A classic source of confusion: biweekly is every two weeks (26 checks, with two "bonus" three-paycheck months a year), while semi-monthly is twice a calendar month (24 checks, always two per month). The calculator keeps them distinct because the divisor is what sets the per-paycheck amount.

Federal income tax is marginal: each slice of your income is taxed at its own rate, and the calculator adds the slices up. This version uses the 2026 single-filer bracket schedule published on this site — the same brackets as our income tax calculator — for every filing status, which keeps the math verifiable while the full W-4 version is built.

2026 federal brackets (single-filer schedule)

Filing-status notes

FICA: Social Security and Medicare

FICA is simpler than income tax because it is flat. Social Security takes 6.2% of wages up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500 — wages above that are exempt, so the maximum employee Social Security tax for 2026 is $11,439. Medicare takes 1.45% of all wages with no cap, per IRS Publication 15 (2026), Employer's Tax Guide. This version does not include the additional 0.9% Medicare surtax on high wages.

This is version 1 of the paycheck calculator — a transparent estimator, not a payroll system. It deliberately leaves out:

• Graduated state taxes: states use their own brackets and rules, so v1 applies one flat rate you enter.
• City and local taxes: local income taxes are not included.
• The standard deduction: the brackets apply directly to wages after pretax deductions, matching this site's income tax calculator.
• Tax credits: child tax credit, earned income credit and others are not modelled.
• The additional Medicare surtax: the extra 0.9% above $200,000 of wages is excluded.
• Status-specific federal schedules: all filing statuses use the single-filer bracket schedule in v1.

A full W-4-style version with status-specific brackets, standard deductions and graduated state taxes is planned. Once you know your take-home number, put it to work: a savings goal calculator turns the per-paycheck figure into a concrete monthly savings plan.