Disclaimer

1. Why these are estimates

A take-home pay figure depends on facts we cannot know: your credits, your dependants, your deductions, your employer's benefit structure, your residency history, and any income that is not wages. Our calculators model the typical case cleanly and accurately. They cannot model your case completely, because you have not told us — and by design, cannot tell us — enough about it.

Treat the output as a well-informed approximation of the right order of magnitude, not as a computed liability.

2. What the salary engine does model

For tax year 2026, across all 51 US jurisdictions:

• Federal income tax on ordinary income, using the published marginal bands.
• The federal standard deduction for your selected filing status: single, married filing jointly, or head of household.
• Social Security (up to the annual wage base), Medicare, and the Additional Medicare Tax above the statutory threshold.
• State income tax, including flat, progressive and zero-rate systems, with each state's own standard deduction, personal exemption or exemption credit.
• State-specific mechanics where they materially change the answer: percentage-of- income and sliding standard deductions, exemption phase-outs, deductibility of federal tax where a state still permits it, and high-income surtaxes.
• City and county income taxes for the localities offered in each state's selector.
• Employee-side state payroll levies — disability insurance, paid family and medical leave, long-term care and transit premiums — where they exist.
• Pre-tax contributions you enter: 401(k)-type deferrals (which reduce income tax but not FICA) and Section 125 amounts such as HSA, FSA and insurance premiums (which reduce both).

3. What it deliberately does not model

These omissions are the most common reasons a real payslip or return differs from what you see here:

• Tax credits. No Earned Income Tax Credit, Child Tax Credit, education, dependant care, saver's or state-level credits. Credits reduce tax directly and can be large. If you qualify for any, your real tax will be lower than shown.
• Itemised deductions. We assume the standard deduction. If you itemise — mortgage interest, large charitable giving, significant SALT — your taxable income differs.
• Non-wage income. Self-employment and 1099 income, investment income, capital gains, rental income, retirement distributions and business income are not modelled. Self-employed readers in particular should note that self-employment tax works differently from the FICA shown here.
• Part-year and multi-state situations. We assume you were a full-year resident of one state, working in that state. Moving mid-year, commuting across a state line, remote work under another state's rules, and reciprocity agreements all change the answer materially.
• Every local tax. Thousands of US municipalities and school districts levy income taxes. We include the largest and most searched, plus statewide averages where noted, but the list is not exhaustive.
• Withholding versus liability. We compute an annual liability. Your employer withholds according to your Form W-4, which may deliberately over- or under-withhold. Your paycheque will rarely match a twelfth of this figure exactly.
• Everything else on a payslip. Employer benefit deductions, union dues, garnishments, retirement loan repayments, equity compensation, bonuses taxed at supplemental rates, and the Alternative Minimum Tax.

4. Currency of the data

Reference data reflects tax year 2026 as published by the IRS and each state revenue authority, with the source cited on each state's page. Legislatures amend rates and thresholds frequently, sometimes retroactively and often mid-year — in recent years a dozen states have changed rates within a single tax year. Figures here may lag such a change.

Always confirm the current rate with the relevant authority before relying on it. We correct known errors promptly, but we do not warrant that any figure is current, complete or accurate at the moment you read it.

5. Non-tax calculators

The same principle applies to every other calculator on this site. Energy, running cost, nutrition, academic conversion and fee calculators rely on published reference figures, manufacturer specifications and stated assumptions, all of which vary in practice. Real-world results depend on tariffs, usage patterns, hardware condition, individual circumstances and institutional policy. Nutrition and health-adjacent outputs are general guidance and are never a substitute for a veterinarian or clinician.

6. No liability for reliance

To the fullest extent permitted by law, CalcuGrid accepts no liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on any figure, statement or output on this site — including underpaid or overpaid tax, penalties, interest, missed opportunities, or decisions about employment, relocation or budgeting. Use of the site is entirely at your own risk. This section should be read together with the limitation of liability in our Terms of Service.

7. Reporting an error

If a figure looks wrong, we want to know — accuracy is the entire point of this project. Email contact@calcugrid.com with the page URL, the inputs you used, the figure you expected and, ideally, a link to the authoritative source. Corrections to reference data are made at source and regenerated across every affected page.