Take-home pay calculator: what your paycheck is actually worth (2026)

Gross salary in, every withheld line out, at whatever frequency you actually get paid. Federal brackets, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax and mandatory state payroll deductions, each shown with the rate it was charged at and the amount it was charged on.

What the pay frequency actually changes

Nothing about your annual tax. It changes the cheque, and the two frequencies people mix up are the ones that differ least on paper. Every row below is the same $75,000 salary.

Every two weeks is 26 payments and twice a month is 24, which is why the biweekly cheque is smaller. Same annual money, spread thinner, with two months a year carrying a third cheque. If you budget monthly on a biweekly salary, those two months are the ones that make the year work.

The 401(k) line, and the mistake in it

A traditional 401(k) deferral is excluded from federal taxable income and included in Social Security and Medicare wages. It shows up in box 1 of a W-2 as a reduction and in boxes 3 and 5 as no reduction at all. Calculators that subtract the deferral from gross and then run FICA on what's left overstate take-home by 7.65% of the deferral.

The deferral saves $2,695 in tax. Run the same deferral through a calculator that takes it off before FICA and you get $3,460, because it hands you back $765 of Social Security and Medicare you never stopped paying. The money isn't lost either way, it's deferred into the account, but the cheque is smaller than the naive version claims.

Health premiums and payroll HSA contributions run through a section 125 cafeteria plan and do come out before FICA as well as before income tax, so those two genuinely do save 7.65% on top of the income tax saving. That is the difference between the two deduction types and the calculator applies it.

The federal side, which is the same everywhere

Federal income tax runs on taxable income, which is gross less pre-tax deductions less the standard deduction of $16,100 for a single filer or $32,200 filing jointly. Each rate applies only to the slice of income inside its bracket, which is why the top rate is never the rate you pay.

Three states also take a mandatory employee contribution that is neither income tax nor FICA and comes out of every cheque all the same: CA at 1.3%, NY at 0.43% plus 0.5%, NJ at 0.23%. California's is the one that moves a number: 1.3% of all wages with no cap is $1,300 on a $100,000 salary, more than several states take in income tax altogether.

Paycheck calculators by state

Same $75,000 salary, single filer, standard deduction, run through every state schedule we have confirmed 2026 figures for. The spread from top to bottom is $5,989 a year, which is 8.0% of gross. Of the 48 covered, 9 levy no income tax on wages, 12 charge a single flat rate, and 27 run graduated brackets.

9 jurisdictions tie at the top on $61,593, because they all take the same nothing, and Oregon sits at the bottom on $55,604. Read that as a tax figure and nothing else. It says nothing about what either place costs to live in, and the price gap between US states is wider than this tax gap: each state page carries its own price level, and the cost of living calculator puts two of them side by side.