US Take-Home Pay Calculator 2026

This free take home pay calculator shows exactly how much of your US salary you keep after taxes in 2026. Enter your gross annual salary, choose your filing status and state, and you’ll instantly see your net pay broken down by federal income tax, state income tax, Social Security and Medicare. It’s the fastest way to turn a job offer’s headline number into the figure that actually lands in your bank account.

Why your take-home pay is lower than your salary

When an employer advertises a salary, that’s your gross pay — the amount before any deductions. Your net pay (or take-home pay) is what’s left after the government takes its share. In the US, four main deductions stand between your gross and net pay, and this take home pay calculator accounts for all of them.

The four deductions explained

Federal income tax is charged on a progressive scale: the more you earn, the higher the rate on each additional dollar. For 2026 the rates run from 10% to 37% across seven brackets, applied to your income after the standard deduction ($16,100 for single filers, $32,200 for married couples filing jointly). Only the income inside each band is taxed at that band’s rate, which is why almost nobody pays their headline rate on their whole salary.

State income tax varies enormously. Nine states — Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming — charge no broad personal income tax at all. New Hampshire is the newest addition to that list: it taxed dividends and interest until that levy was fully phased out, and now taxes no personal income at all. Most other states run their own progressive brackets with their own standard deductions, which are almost always smaller than the federal one.

Social Security and Medicare (FICA) are payroll taxes deducted from almost every paycheck. Social Security is 6.2% of wages up to an annual cap ($184,500 in 2026), and Medicare is 1.45% with no cap, plus an extra 0.9% on earnings above $200,000 for single filers. Together they fund retirement and healthcare programs. FICA is the deduction people forget when comparing offers, and at middle incomes it often takes more than state tax does.

How to use this take home pay calculator to compare jobs and states

The real power of a take-home calculator is comparison. Run the same salary through two states and the gap is usually larger than people expect — but not always in the direction they assume.

Take $90,000 as a single filer. Federal tax comes to $10,970 and FICA to $6,885 regardless of where you live. In Texas, with no state income tax, you keep $72,145. In California, state tax adds $4,293, leaving $67,852. That’s a real gap of over $4,000 a year, and it’s the calculation most people run before a move.

The comparison almost everyone gets wrong

Here is what that same $90,000 looks like in New York State: $4,270. Within about twenty dollars of California.
This surprises people, because California’s 13.3% top rate is famous and New York’s is not. But top marginal rates describe millionaires, not ordinary earners. At $90,000 a Californian sits in the 9.3% band and a New Yorker in the 5.9% band — yet New York’s brackets climb faster at the bottom and its standard deduction, while larger than California’s, still leaves more income exposed than the federal one does. The two states land in almost exactly the same place.

The real divergence isn’t the state line. It’s the city line. A resident of New York City pays city income tax on top of state tax — roughly 3.078% to 3.876%, with the top city rate starting at just $50,000 of taxable income. On $90,000 that adds around $3,050, taking the total state-and-local bill past $7,300. A Californian on the same salary pays $4,293 and no city income tax at all.
So the honest version of “California is a high-tax state” is narrower than the slogan: California is expensive at the very top, roughly average in the middle, and cheaper than New York City for anyone living in the five boroughs. New York City, Yonkers, and municipalities across Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, Indiana, Missouri, Kentucky and Alabama all levy local income taxes that state-level calculators quietly ignore — including, for now, this one. Where that applies, the calculator flags it beneath your results rather than pretending the number is complete.

If you’re researching what different roles pay in the first place, see our full breakdown of the average salary in the USA and individual guides like the registered nurse salary USA.

Is this take home pay calculator accurate?

The federal income tax and FICA calculations use official 2026 IRS and SSA figures and are accurate for a standard situation. For California and New York, state tax is calculated using each state’s real progressive brackets and its own standard deduction, so the result should be close to what you actually pay. For every other state we currently apply a single approximate rate, which is less precise at very high and very low incomes — the calculator labels which method it used for the state you picked. We’re adding full bracket schedules state by state. City and county income taxes are never included.

Why do the state figures say “most recently published”?

States index their bracket thresholds to inflation and publish the coming year’s figures on their own timetable, usually in the autumn. California’s Franchise Tax Board, for example, doesn’t release final figures for a tax year until late in that year. Any calculator claiming finalised state brackets months early is quietly using the previous year’s numbers. We use the most recent officially published schedule and say so.

What’s the difference between gross and net pay?

Gross pay is your total salary before deductions — the number on your job offer. Net pay is what you actually receive after federal tax, state tax and FICA are withheld. This calculator converts one into the other.

Which states have no income tax?

As of 2026, nine states levy no broad personal income tax: Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming. Workers in these states keep more of their salary, though several offset it with higher sales or property taxes — Texas in particular funds itself through property tax rates well above the national average, which can erase the income tax saving for homeowners.

Does the calculator include 401(k) or health insurance?

No. This take home pay calculator covers taxes only. Pre-tax contributions like a 401(k) or employer health insurance would lower your taxable income and change your final net pay, so your real paycheck may differ slightly.

Want to know what you could be earning in the first place? Explore our full guide to the average salary in the USA, or check the official tax figures at the IRS.

Add this calculator to your site — free

You’re welcome to embed this calculator on your own website at no cost. It’s the same tool you see above: 2026 IRS federal brackets, official state rate schedules for every state that levies an income tax, and local tax warnings where cities charge on top. No registration, no API key, and we don’t track your visitors. Copy the code below.

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The iframe resizes itself as results appear, so it won’t clip. If you’d prefer a fixed height, drop the script and set the height manually. The only thing we ask is that you leave the attribution link in place — that’s what makes it free.