Take-Home Pay Calculator

Enter your salary, filing status, and pay frequency. You get your estimated 2026 net paycheck with every subtraction itemized: federal income tax bracket by bracket, Social Security, Medicare, your 401(k), and health premiums, per paycheck and per year.

Data reviewed: August 2026. Figures here come from published sources and change over time. How we verify

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How this take-home pay estimator works

The gap between your salary and your bank deposit is not one mystery, it is five or six small deliberate subtractions, and this page walks every one of them with your numbers. Your pre-tax 401(k) and health premiums come off first. Then the standard deduction for tax year 2026 comes off and what remains runs through the seven federal brackets, exactly the way our income tax calculator does it. FICA is computed separately, on a different base (more on that below, it is the most useful thing on this page). Whatever survives is your take-home pay, shown per paycheck for the frequency you picked and per year.

We assume you take the standard deduction because roughly nine in ten filers do; if you itemize, your federal tax will come in lower than shown. The brackets and deduction come from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, and the Social Security wage base comes from the SSA's October 24, 2025 announcement.

The formula

Federal taxable income = Gross − 401(k) − Health premiums − Standard deduction
Federal tax = Σ (income in each 2026 bracket × that bracket's rate)
FICA wages = Gross − Health premiums (the 401(k) does NOT come out)
Social Security = 6.2% × FICA wages, up to $184,500  |  Medicare = 1.45% + 0.9% above $200,000/$250,000
Take-home = Gross − 401(k) − Health premiums − all taxes

Gross is your salary before anything is touched. The standard deduction is $16,100 single and $32,200 married filing jointly for 2026. Social Security stops at the first $184,500 of wages; Medicare never stops, and adds 0.9% on wages above $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married filing jointly). The two formulas use different bases on purpose: that asymmetry is real tax law, not a shortcut.

Worked example

You earn $85,000, file single, are paid every two weeks, and put 6% into a pre-tax 401(k). The 401(k) takes $5,100 off the top, and the standard deduction takes $16,100 more: $85,000 − $5,100 − $16,100 = $63,800 of taxable income. The brackets tax it in slices: 10% on $12,400 ($1,240), 12% on $38,000 ($4,560), 22% on the last $13,400 ($2,948), for $8,748.00 of federal income tax.

FICA ignores the 401(k) entirely and taxes the full $85,000: Social Security $5,270.00, Medicare $1,232.50. Total tax: $15,250.50, a 17.9% effective rate. Take-home: $64,649.50 a year, which is $2,486.52 per biweekly paycheck. Each gross check is $3,269.23, so about $783 of every check goes somewhere before it reaches you, and $196.15 of that somewhere is your own 401(k).

The 401(k) asymmetry: one deduction, two tax systems

Here is the detail most paycheck estimates blur, and it is worth thirty seconds of your attention. A pre-tax 401(k) contribution skips federal income tax now, but it does not skip payroll tax. Every 401(k) dollar still pays the full 7.65% of FICA on the way past. Pre-tax health premiums are the opposite kind of special: under a Section 125 cafeteria plan they escape both income tax and FICA. So a dollar of health premium saves you your marginal rate plus 7.65 cents, while a dollar of 401(k) saves the marginal rate only. Neither is a reason to change what you contribute, but it explains why the Social Security line on your pay stub is bigger than you expected: it is computed on wages your 401(k) never reduced. There is a quiet consolation, too: because those dollars paid Social Security tax, they still count toward the earnings record your future benefit is computed from.

Practical corollary: dental, vision, HSA, and FSA payroll deductions behave like the health premium here, so add them into that field to sharpen the estimate.

Why your real paycheck will not match this to the penny

Your employer does not know your final tax bill; they estimate it, using the IRS withholding tables and whatever your W-4 told them. So the federal line on your pay stub is a prediction of the very tax this page computes. When the prediction runs high all year, April brings a refund; when it runs low, April brings a bill. Neither changes what you actually owed, only when you paid it. This page estimates the tax itself, which is the number your withholding is aiming at. If your stub's federal withholding is far from our federal income tax line (after dividing by your number of paychecks), your W-4 is the thing to look at, and the extra-withholding field above models the fix: dollars you volunteer per check on W-4 line 4c come out of the paycheck now and settle up on your return.

26 checks or 24: the two paychecks people forget

Biweekly (every two weeks) means 26 checks a year; semimonthly (say, the 15th and the last day) means 24. Same salary, same annual tax, but the biweekly checks are smaller because the year is sliced thinner: $85,000 gross is $3,269.23 per biweekly check and $3,541.67 per semimonthly one. The biweekly schedule's consolation prize is that two months a year deliver a third paycheck. If you budget by the month, those two extra checks are the closest thing personal finance has to found money: they are fully yours, already taxed in these numbers, and unclaimed by any monthly bill. People who route them straight to savings or debt tend to be glad they decided that in advance.

High earners: the mid-year raise that is not a raise

Social Security tax stops at the wage base, $184,500 for 2026, and the stopping is visible. Someone earning $250,000, paid biweekly, crosses the base in paycheck 20 of 26; from the next check on, the 6.2% simply stops being withheld and each check arrives about $596 larger. Every fall, payroll departments field a small wave of "I think my paycheck is wrong" emails from people getting this exact non-raise. Enter a salary above the base and the steps will show you your own cap paycheck. Above $200,000 ($250,000 married filing jointly) the traffic runs the other way: the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax starts, and employers must begin withholding it at $200,000 of your own wages regardless of filing status, so married couples between the thresholds often see it withheld and then returned at filing.

The honest note on state tax

There is no state tax table behind this page, and that is deliberate rather than lazy. Forty-one states tax wages, each with its own brackets, deductions, credits, and in some places city and county income taxes stacked on top; a table pretending to capture all of that would be wrong somewhere for almost everyone. Instead you enter one flat percent, we apply it to the same taxable income the federal math uses, and the result says so plainly. If you know your state's effective rate on your income (a quick search for your state plus "effective income tax rate" gets you close), you will land within a few dollars per check. Leave it blank and you get a clean federal-only estimate, clearly labeled. Also outside the scope here: bonuses and RSUs (withheld differently), state disability insurance in a handful of states, and local occupational taxes.

Sources

Where the numbers on this page come from. We go to the body that publishes the figure, not to another calculator. Figures on this page were checked against these sources in August 2026. See how we verify.

Frequently asked questions

How much of my paycheck do I actually take home?

For most salaried workers, between 70% and 80% of gross pay survives federal taxes. In our worked example, an $85,000 single filer paid biweekly with a 6% pre-tax 401(k) takes home $64,649.50 a year, about 76% of gross, and the 401(k) piece is still their money, just parked in a retirement account. State income tax, where it applies, takes the figure lower.

Is a 401(k) taken out before or after taxes?

A traditional 401(k) comes out before federal income tax but not before payroll tax. Every contributed dollar still pays 6.2% Social Security and 1.45% Medicare on the way past. Pre-tax health premiums are more powerful: under a Section 125 plan they skip income tax and FICA both. That is why cutting your 401(k) contribution raises your paycheck by less than the full contribution amount.

Why is my actual paycheck different from this estimate?

Your employer withholds federal tax using IRS withholding tables driven by your W-4, which is a prediction of your final tax bill, not the bill itself. This page estimates the bill itself. Other common gaps: itemized deductions, tax credits, state and local taxes, dental or vision or HSA deductions you did not include in the health premium field, and bonuses, which are withheld at a flat rate.

What is FICA on my pay stub?

FICA is the payroll tax pair: 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare, 7.65% total, matched by your employer. For 2026, Social Security applies to your first $184,500 of wages (announced by the SSA on October 24, 2025), while Medicare applies to everything and adds 0.9% above $200,000 of wages ($250,000 for married filing jointly). Unlike income tax, FICA starts on your first dollar; there is no standard deduction.

Why did my paycheck suddenly get bigger late in the year?

You probably crossed the Social Security wage base. The 6.2% tax stops once your year-to-date wages pass $184,500 (for 2026), so every paycheck after that point is larger by exactly the Social Security amount that is no longer withheld. On a $250,000 salary paid biweekly, that happens around paycheck 20 and adds about $596 per check for the rest of the year. In January the tax starts over.

Biweekly vs semimonthly: which pays more?

Neither. The annual salary and annual tax are identical; only the slicing differs. Biweekly means 26 smaller checks, semimonthly means 24 larger ones. The practical difference is that a biweekly schedule delivers a third paycheck in two months of the year, which is a genuinely useful budgeting quirk if you assign those two checks a job (savings, debt) before they arrive.

Does this calculator include state income tax?

Only if you give it a rate. There is no state tax table behind this page: 41 states tax wages with their own brackets, deductions, and local add-ons, and a one-size table would quietly be wrong for almost everyone. Enter a flat percent (your state's effective rate on your income) and we apply it to the same taxable income as the federal math, clearly labeled as a simplification. Blank means federal only, and the result says so.

Is this what my employer will actually deposit?

Treat it as a close estimate of the deposit, not a promise. The tax math here is the real 2026 math, but your employer's withholding tables approximate it, and payroll systems handle rounding, benefits, and year-to-date corrections in their own ways. If the estimate and your stub differ by more than a few percent, the usual suspects are your W-4 settings, unlisted pre-tax benefits, or state tax. For decisions with real money attached, confirm with your payroll department or a tax professional.

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