Tax & Salary Calculators

Two people earning an identical $75,000 salary can take home meaningfully different amounts depending on where they live, because federal income tax and FICA — 6.2% Social Security up to the $184,500 wage base and 1.45% Medicare with no cap — are the same everywhere, but state income tax is not. New York runs nine progressive brackets from 3.9% to 10.9%, layered on top of its own $8,000 (single) or $16,050 (married filing jointly) standard deduction, entirely separate from the federal one.

Pennsylvania takes the opposite approach: a single flat 3.07% on every dollar of wages, unchanged since 2004, with no bracket schedule and no standard deduction at all, so filing status has zero effect on the state tax line. Washington sits at a third extreme — no wage income tax whatsoever, one of only nine US states in that position — so its paycheck calculator's state-tax output is always $0.

None of these numbers is the full story on an actual pay stub, either. New York City and Yonkers residents owe an additional local tax on top of New York State's rate; nearly every Pennsylvania resident owes a local Earned Income Tax set by their specific municipality and school district under Act 32, with Philadelphia running its own city Wage Tax instead; and Washington workers see two payroll premiums outside its income-tax-free structure — the WA Cares long-term care premium and the state's Paid Family & Medical Leave premium.

Run your own salary through the calculator for the state you actually live in, since neither the federal brackets nor FICA change, but the state line can shift take-home pay by thousands of dollars a year.

A 457(b) and a Health Savings Account both let you set aside money before income tax touches it, but they exist for different purposes and follow different contribution rules. A 457(b) is a deferred-compensation retirement plan, mostly for state and local government employees plus some nonprofit and hospital staff.

For 2026 the basic deferral limit is $24,500, with an $8,000 catch-up from age 50 (or an enhanced $11,250 for those turning 60 through 63), though — critically — the age-based catch-up exists only in governmental 457(b) plans, not in the tax-exempt-employer version offered by hospitals, charities and private universities. A separate special three-year catch-up, available in both plan types, lets someone close to retirement contribute up to double the basic limit if they under-contributed in earlier years.

An HSA works alongside a high-deductible health plan instead, and its limit depends on coverage tier rather than age bracket: $4,400 for self-only coverage or $8,750 for family coverage in 2026, plus a $1,000 catch-up from age 55 that — unlike the 457(b) catch-ups — must go into each spouse's own account rather than being combined.

HSA eligibility is tested month by month, so someone who only carries HDHP coverage for part of the year gets a prorated limit, unless the last-month rule lets them claim the full amount by staying eligible through the following year's testing period. Both calculators handle these mechanics — proration, catch-ups, and the rules that make one type of plan different from another — directly.

Not every tax question on this site is about payroll withholding. Anyone earning income outside a W-2 — freelancing, consulting, running a small business — owes self-employment tax instead: 15.3% covering both the employee and employer halves of Social Security and Medicare, applied to 92.35% of net profit rather than the full amount, since that adjustment mirrors the exclusion a regular employee already gets when their employer's matching FICA share is never counted as taxable wages.

Social Security's 12.4% portion stops at the same $184,500 wage base a W-2 paycheck uses, and any wages from a regular job count against that base first; Medicare's 2.9% has no ceiling, and an extra 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax kicks in above a filing-status-specific threshold. Half of the total is deductible on Form 1040, and most self-employed people pay it in quarterly estimated installments rather than one lump sum.

Two more everyday calculators round out this category. The reverse sales tax calculator solves a genuinely different problem than adding tax forward: given a total that already includes sales tax, it divides — rather than subtracts — to find the original pre-tax price, which matters for expense reports, accounting reconciliation, and checking a receipt.

And the PTO accrual calculator, while not a tax calculation, converts a handbook's stated accrual rate — per pay period, per hour worked, or a flat annual figure — into a projected balance, since paid time off is itself a form of earned compensation with its own accrual and, in some states, payout rules at termination.

A $2,000 bonus that lands as $1,460 in your account isn't being taxed at a higher rate forever — it's being withheld differently in the moment. Under IRS Publication 15, employers can withhold federal tax from bonuses, commissions, and other "supplemental wages" using a flat 22% rate instead of running them through your regular W-4 withholding table, regardless of your actual tax bracket.

That flat rate jumps to a mandatory 37% on any portion of an employee's supplemental wages that exceeds $1 million in a calendar year — a threshold that only affects very high earners, but the 22% flat-rate mechanic is why a bonus often feels over-taxed compared to a normal paycheck. This is withholding, not your final tax bill: if your actual marginal rate is lower than 22%, the difference comes back as part of your refund (or reduces what you owe) when you file, since withholding and tax liability are reconciled on your return, not on the pay stub.

That withholding sits on top of a distinction every paycheck calculator on this site relies on: gross pay versus net pay. Gross pay is what you earned before anything is subtracted — salary, hourly wages, overtime, and bonuses combined. Net pay, the number that actually hits your bank account, is gross pay minus three layers of subtraction: pre-tax deductions (401(k) or 457(b) contributions, HSA contributions, traditional health insurance premiums) that reduce the wages taxes are calculated on in the first place; the taxes themselves (federal, FICA, state, and local); and post-tax deductions (Roth retirement contributions, wage garnishments, union dues) that come out after taxes are already withheld.

Because pre-tax deductions lower your taxable wages before federal and state tax are calculated, increasing a 457(b) or HSA contribution can shrink your tax bill by more than the contribution amount alone — a mechanic worth understanding before running any of this hub's paycheck calculators.