Georgia Paycheck Calculator

Georgia taxes wages at a single flat 4.99% rate for tax year 2026, effective January 1, 2026, per the Georgia Department of Revenue's own current guidance. That figure is the latest step in a deliberate multi-year phase-down: House Bill 1437, enacted in 2022, moved Georgia off its long-standing six-bracket progressive schedule onto a flat tax starting with tax year 2024, and subsequent legislation — most recently House Bill 111 in 2025 — accelerated the pace of the scheduled rate cuts to reach 4.99% a year earlier than the original 2022 timetable projected.

Before applying that rate, Georgia subtracts its own standard deduction from gross income: $15,000 for single filers, head of household, or married filing separately, and $30,000 for married filing jointly, both figures set directly by the Department of Revenue rather than derived by doubling the single amount the way Illinois's married exemption is. The worked example above shows the resulting math directly — a $75,000 single-filer salary produces $2,994.00 in Georgia tax (4.99% of $60,000), while an identical married filer produces $2,245.50 (4.99% of $45,000), a $748.50 difference driven entirely by the larger deduction.

Because Georgia's tax is flat with no bracket schedule, the only moving part in the state-tax calculation is which standard deduction applies — there's no marginal-rate math the way New York's or the federal system's progressive brackets require, which keeps Georgia's state-tax line comparatively simple to verify by hand.

Anyone comparing older figures for Georgia — 5.19% for tax year 2025, or other numbers still circulating on outdated third-party aggregators — should treat 4.99% as the correct, current rate for 2026 specifically; Georgia's rate has changed nearly every year since the 2022 legislation took effect, so year-specific accuracy genuinely matters here.

Georgia's move to a flat tax wasn't a single event — it was a legislated, multi-year transition. Before House Bill 1437, Georgia used a six-bracket progressive schedule with a top marginal rate that applied to most working taxpayers at fairly modest income levels, a structure the 2022 legislation set out to replace gradually rather than all at once. Tax year 2024 was the first year the flat rate took effect, and the rate has been reduced roughly a tenth of a percentage point in most years since, contingent in earlier iterations of the law on the state meeting certain revenue conditions.

House Bill 111, signed in 2025, is the most recent piece of that ongoing process — it accelerated Georgia's already-scheduled rate reductions, which is why 4.99% took effect for tax year 2026 rather than the somewhat later date the original 2022 schedule had projected. This history matters for anyone checking Georgia's rate against older sources: because the number has moved nearly every year since 2022, a figure like 5.19% (Georgia's rate for tax year 2025) or 5.39% (an earlier historical figure) is simply out of date for 2026, not incorrect for the year it originally described.

Whether Georgia's rate falls further in future tax years depends on legislation the state legislature has not yet enacted as of this writing. Georgia's pattern over the past several years has been continued reduction, but that is not a guarantee, and this calculator's 4.99% figure reflects the rate confirmed as current for tax year 2026 specifically, not a projection of where the rate might go next.

This page computes statutory federal, Georgia state, and FICA withholding on a regular annual salary using the 2026 flat rate and standard deduction — the same core structure every state page in this series uses, adapted to Georgia's specific rate-and-deduction combination. It does not account for Georgia-specific credits, pre-tax retirement or health contributions, or additional non-wage income that would change a real return's bottom line.

Georgia does not, unlike Pennsylvania or Ohio, generally impose a separate local income tax on wages in most jurisdictions, which means this calculator's stateTax figure is a more complete picture of a typical Georgia resident's actual state-and-local income tax burden than the equivalent figure is for Pennsylvania or Ohio residents in areas with municipal income tax — a genuine structural difference worth noting for anyone comparing this page against those two.

As with every state page in this series, the number that matters most for comparing states head-to-head is the combination of rate and deduction actually applied, not the headline rate alone: Georgia's 4.99% flat rate with a $15,000/$30,000 deduction produces a meaningfully different result than, say, Pennsylvania's lower 3.07% flat rate with no deduction at all, once actual dollar amounts are run through each state's specific formula.