How to Calculate Your Take-Home Pay (Tax Calculator Inside)

The number on your offer letter is not the number that lands in your bank account. Between federal income tax, FICA, state tax, and the pre-tax deductions you elected at open enrollment, a $100,000 salary can produce anywhere from $70,000 to $79,000 of take-home pay depending on where you live and how you've structured your benefits. That spread — nearly $9,000 a year on the same gross — is the reason "what's my take-home" is one of the most-Googled finance questions of every January and every job change.

This guide walks through the math step by step, with the 2026 federal brackets, FICA rates, and a worked example across three states. If you'd rather just see your number, plug your inputs into our take-home pay calculator and skim the rest for context.

Why Your Take-Home Is So Much Less Than Your Salary

Your gross pay gets reduced by four categories of deductions before it shows up in checking:

1. Federal income tax — withheld at a rate based on your W-4 elections.
2. FICA — 6.2% Social Security plus 1.45% Medicare, totaling 7.65%, taken out of every dollar.
3. State (and sometimes local) income tax — depends entirely on where you live and work.
4. Pre-tax deductions — 401(k) contributions, HSA, FSA, health insurance premiums, transit benefits.

The order matters: pre-tax deductions come out before federal and state income tax are computed, so a $200/month HSA contribution doesn't just save the $200 — it also saves you the federal tax (and most state tax) you would have paid on that $200. After-tax deductions like Roth 401(k) or post-tax health insurance come out after taxes, so they reduce take-home but don't reduce your tax bill.

For a precise paycheck-by-paycheck breakdown by your specific state and pre-tax elections, our take-home pay calculator handles all four steps in the right order.

2026 Federal Tax Brackets (Single Filer)

Federal income tax is marginal — each bracket's rate applies only to the dollars inside that bracket, not your whole income. Most people who say "I'm in the 24% bracket" actually have an effective rate closer to 16-19% because the lower brackets pull down the average.

Standard deduction for 2026: roughly $15,750 for single filers, $31,500 for married filing jointly. Subtract that from your gross before applying the brackets. (Itemizing is worth doing only if your itemized deductions — mortgage interest, state/local taxes capped at $10K, charitable giving — exceed the standard deduction.)

To work out your effective federal rate without doing the math by hand, run your gross through our tax bracket calculator — it returns both your marginal and effective rates so you don't conflate the two.

State Income Tax: The Nine States With No Income Tax

Nine US states levy no income tax on wages, which can be worth several thousand dollars a year on a six-figure salary:

• Alaska
• Florida
• Nevada
• New Hampshire (no wage tax; investment-income tax is being phased out)
• South Dakota
• Tennessee
• Texas
• Washington (capital gains tax exists for very high earners but no wage tax)
• Wyoming

The other 41 states plus DC tax wages, with rates ranging from a flat 3-5% (Pennsylvania, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois) to graduated brackets topping out at 13.3% in California for very high earners. New York City and a handful of other cities (Yonkers, Detroit, Philadelphia, several Ohio cities) tack on a local income tax on top of the state rate.

A common mistake: assuming a no-state-tax move automatically wins financially. Property taxes are typically higher in no-income-tax states (Texas property taxes average 1.6% of home value vs 0.7% in California), and sales tax tends to be higher too. The honest comparison runs all three taxes together, plus cost of living. Our salary-to-hourly calculator helps with the gross-side comparison when evaluating offers across states.

FICA: The 7.65% You Cannot Avoid

FICA (Federal Insurance Contributions Act) funds Social Security and Medicare. Two pieces:

• Social Security tax: 6.2% of wages up to the annual wage base (~$176,000 in 2026). Earnings above the cap aren't subject to Social Security tax.
• Medicare tax: 1.45% of all wages, no cap.

Your employer pays a matching 7.65% on top of what you pay (the so-called employer half), which is invisible on your pay stub but is a real cost they're carrying for you. Self-employed people pay both halves — 15.3% — which is the main reason 1099 contract rates need to be meaningfully higher than the W-2 equivalent salary to be financially equivalent.

There's an additional 0.9% Medicare surtax on wages above $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (MFJ), withheld by your employer once you cross the threshold. High earners feel this on their year-end W-2 even if they didn't notice it during the year.

Pre-Tax Deductions That Reduce Your Taxable Income

Every dollar you put into the following accounts (up to the legal limit) lowers your taxable income for federal and most state purposes:

• Traditional 401(k) / 403(b) / 457: 2026 limit ~$24,000 (with catch-up at 50+). Run scenarios through our 401(k) calculator to see how a contribution change shifts both your take-home and your projected balance at retirement.
• HSA (Health Savings Account): 2026 limit ~$4,400 self-only, ~$8,750 family. Triple tax advantage — contributions reduce taxable income, growth is tax-free, and qualified medical withdrawals are tax-free.
• FSA (Flexible Spending Account): 2026 limit ~$3,300 for healthcare FSA. Use-it-or-lose-it (with limited carryover), so contribute only what you'll spend.
• Pre-tax health insurance premiums: Whatever your share of the premium is, taken out pre-tax in most employer plans.
• Pre-tax commuter benefits: Up to ~$315/month for transit and parking in 2026 (urban-area employees).

A back-of-envelope rule: if you're in the 22% federal bracket plus a 5% state, every $1,000 of additional pre-tax contribution reduces your tax bill by ~$270 — so it costs you only $730 of take-home to put $1,000 toward retirement.

Worked Example: $100,000 Salary in CA vs TX vs NY

To make this concrete, let's run a single filer earning $100,000/year with no pre-tax deductions (just the standard deduction), comparing three locations.

Federal tax (same in all three locations):

• Taxable income: $100,000 − $15,750 = $84,250
• Tax in 10% bracket: 10% × $12,000 = $1,200
• Tax in 12% bracket: 12% × $36,800 = $4,416
• Tax in 22% bracket: 22% × $35,450 = $7,799
• Total federal: ~$13,415

FICA (same in all three): 7.65% × $100,000 = $7,650

State tax varies:

• Texas: $0 (no state income tax)
• California: ~$5,800 (graduated brackets, top marginal hit at this income is 9.3%, plus 1.1% disability tax)
• New York (suburban, no NYC tax): ~$5,200 (graduated brackets, ~6% effective at this income)
• New York (NYC resident): ~$5,200 state + ~$3,250 NYC = ~$8,450

Same gross salary, an $8,450 spread between Texas and NYC. Add a 5% 401(k) contribution in any of these scenarios and take-home drops by about $3,800-4,000 (since you're saving the federal+state tax on the contribution), but your retirement balance grows by the full $5,000 plus any employer match. This is the case for funding the 401(k) at least to the match — the employer match is the closest thing to free money in personal finance.

For your own numbers — actual state, actual deductions, actual filing status — the take-home pay calculator does this whole computation in seconds.

FAQ

Q: Why is my actual paycheck slightly different from what the calculator shows? Three usual reasons: your W-4 elections (number of dependents, additional withholding) move the federal withholding, your state may use a different withholding formula than the actual tax owed (you reconcile at filing time), and any post-tax deductions like life insurance or HSA-eligible plans show up after the calculator's pre-tax pass. Calculator + 5% margin is the right mental model.

Q: How do bonuses get taxed? Bonuses are typically withheld at a flat 22% federal rate (37% above $1M cumulative for the year). That's withholding, not your actual tax — your real liability is computed at year-end based on your total income. So a $10K bonus might withhold $2,200 federal upfront, but your actual tax could be $2,400 (if you're in the 24% bracket) or $1,800 (if you're in the 12% bracket), reconciled when you file.

Q: Should I increase my 401(k) to lower my taxes? Almost always yes, at least up to the employer match. Beyond the match, the right answer depends on whether you'd rather take the tax break now (Traditional 401(k)) or pay tax now and withdraw tax-free later (Roth 401(k)). Run the scenarios through our 401(k) calculator to see the long-term effect.

Q: What's the difference between marginal and effective tax rate? Marginal rate is the rate that applies to your next dollar of income. Effective rate is your total tax divided by your total income. A single filer at $100K taxable has a 22% marginal rate but roughly a 16% effective federal rate. People conflate the two when making decisions like "should I take the bonus or work an extra hour" — only the marginal rate matters there.

Q: I work remotely from a different state than my employer. Where do I owe taxes? Generally, you owe state tax where you physically work, not where the company is headquartered. Some states have reciprocity agreements (e.g., NJ/PA) that simplify this. A handful of states (NY, especially) try to claim tax on remote workers under "convenience of the employer" rules, which can leave you double-taxed without a credit on your home state return. If you're cross-state remote, this is worth a $200 conversation with a CPA the year you start.

Q: How does HSA compare to 401(k) for tax savings? HSA wins on a per-dollar basis. 401(k) is tax-deferred — you save tax now, pay tax later when you withdraw. HSA is triple tax-advantaged: tax-free in, tax-free growth, tax-free out for qualified medical expenses (which retirees have plenty of). If you have a high-deductible health plan and access to an HSA, max it before going beyond the 401(k) match.

The Short Version

Your take-home is gross minus federal income tax (marginal brackets, ~$13K on a $100K single), FICA (a flat 7.65% on the first ~$176K), state tax ($0 in nine states up to ~9% in California), and pre-tax deductions. The single biggest lever you control is your pre-tax retirement and HSA contributions — they reduce both your take-home and your tax bill simultaneously, often making the contribution effectively cost 70-80 cents on the dollar. For your specific numbers, our take-home pay calculator, tax bracket calculator, 401(k) calculator, and salary-to-hourly calculator cover the full personal-finance math without the upsell.