Alaska Paycheck Calculator

No. Alaska has had no individual income tax since 1980, when the state repealed it after Trans-Alaska Pipeline oil production began generating enough state revenue to fund government without one. It is one of only nine US states with no tax on wage income, and Alaska is also the only one of those nine with no state sales tax either.

Rising oil revenue from the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which began operating in 1977, gave the state enough non-tax income that the legislature repealed the individual income tax in 1980. Alaska has not reinstated one since, funding state government instead primarily through oil and gas production taxes and royalties rather than taxes on individual wages.

No, Alaska itself does not tax the Permanent Fund Dividend, consistent with having no individual income tax on any type of income. The IRS does treat the PFD as federally taxable income, however, so while this calculator's state-tax line stays at $0, a PFD recipient's federal tax return would still need to report that payment separately from wage income.

For the state-tax line specifically, yes — Alaska withholds nothing where a taxed state would take a meaningful bite. Federal tax and FICA are unchanged, since those are set at the federal level regardless of state, so the gap between Alaska and a taxed state equals exactly what that other state's income tax would have been at the same salary.

Alaska has no statewide sales tax, but many boroughs and cities levy their own local sales taxes, sometimes exceeding 7% combined. No Alaska municipality levies a local wage or income tax, so this calculator's $0 state-tax result holds regardless of which Alaska city or borough someone lives in.

No. Federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare are calculated identically for every US resident regardless of state — the same 2026 brackets, the same $184,500 Social Security wage base, and the same 1.45% Medicare rate apply whether someone lives in Alaska, Texas, or anywhere else. Only state-level taxes vary, and Alaska's happens to be zero for wages.

It's legally possible — unlike Texas or Nevada, Alaska has no specific constitutional ban on an income tax — but it would require the legislature to pass new statute, something that hasn't happened since 1980 despite periodic budget-shortfall discussions. Any change would show up in this calculator's data the moment it took effect, since the engine treats tax rules as data, not a fixed assumption.

Eight others: Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. New Hampshire is a partial historical exception — it separately taxed interest and dividend income until that tax was fully repealed in 2025, but it never taxed wages, so a wage-earner there always saw the same $0 state-tax outcome this Alaska calculator shows.

Alaska withholds no state income tax, so only two things come out of a paycheck: federal income tax and FICA (6.2% Social Security plus 1.45% Medicare). On a $75,000 single salary, that combination totals about 17.9% of gross pay — $13,407.50 a year in this calculator's worked example. The exact percentage rises with income because federal tax is progressive, while FICA stays close to flat below the Social Security wage base. There's no separate Alaska withholding line to add on top, unlike almost every other state.

For a single filer earning $100,000 a year in Alaska, this calculator's 2026 engine computes $13,170 in federal income tax, $6,200 in Social Security, $1,450 in Medicare, and $271 in Alaska's employee UI contribution (capped at the $54,200 wage base) — $21,091 in total tax withheld. That leaves $78,909 in net annual take-home pay, an effective tax rate of 21.09%. Because Alaska charges no state income tax, none of that $21,091 is state income tax; a state with even a modest flat income tax would show a noticeably lower net-pay figure at the same $100,000 salary.

A single filer earning $120,000 a year in Alaska keeps $92,979 after tax under this calculator's 2026 figures: $17,570 in federal income tax, $7,440 in Social Security, $1,740 in Medicare, and $271 in Alaska's capped employee UI contribution, for $27,021 in total withholding — an effective tax rate of 22.52%. Alaska's $0 state-tax line means none of that is state income tax; the same salary in a state with a 5% flat income tax would owe roughly $6,000 more per year in state tax alone, with federal, FICA, and UI unchanged.

This calculator doesn't rate salaries, but for context, the U.S. Census Bureau put Alaska's median household income at $91,260 in 2024, the most recent year available, noticeably above the national median. A "good" salary depends heavily on where in Alaska someone lives — Anchorage's cost of living differs sharply from rural or off-road communities — and on household size, not just gross pay. What this tool can show is the actual after-tax number for any specific salary, a more useful comparison than a single statewide benchmark.

Yes — unlike most states, Alaska requires employees, not just employers, to contribute to unemployment insurance. The Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development sets the 2026 employee rate at 0.50% of wages up to a $54,200 taxable wage base, working out to a maximum of $271 a year. This calculator computes that contribution as its own line, separate from the $0 state income tax line, and subtracts it from net pay along with federal tax and FICA.