Your tax bracket tells you the rate on your next dollar. This calculator tells you the rate on all of them: federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare, and state tax, rolled into the one percentage your paycheck actually loses.
Ask most people what they pay in taxes and they answer with their bracket. A worker in the 22 percent bracket will say 22 percent, and the answer is wrong in a direction that matters. The bracket only prices the last slice of income. Everything below it is taxed at lower rates, and a chunk never gets taxed at all because the standard deduction erases it first. The number that describes what you actually lose is the effective rate, which is total tax divided by total income.
The gap between the two numbers is not a rounding error. In the default example below, a single filer with 75,000 dollars of wages sits in the 22 percent bracket and pays an effective federal rate of 8.47 percent of gross pay. Less than half the bracket. Once Social Security and Medicare enter, the combined loss climbs to 16.12 percent, which is still six points under the bracket figure people quote when they complain about taxes.
This matters in practice because the effective rate is the number behind real decisions. Comparing two job offers in different states, deciding whether a 401k contribution is worth it, estimating what a raise changes about your monthly cash flow, or checking whether a relocation saves money all run on the effective rate. The marginal rate answers a narrower question, whether the next dollar of deduction is worth buying, and it is the wrong tool for everything else.
Variables in plain terms. Gross wages are what your employer pays before anything is withheld. The pre-tax 401k contribution reduces income tax but stays fully exposed to FICA, which is a detail most summaries get wrong. The deduction line automatically uses the larger of the 2026 standard deduction or your itemized figure, so entering itemized amounts below the standard leaves the calculation untouched. The Social Security wage base of 184,500 dollars caps the 6.2 percent tax, which is why FICA is regressive at the top: it consumes 7.65 percent of a 75,000 dollar salary but a shrinking share of income above the cap. The calculator uses the 2026 federal brackets and standard deductions from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32.
Take the single filer with 75,000 dollars of wages and a 6,000 dollar pre-tax 401k contribution. Adjusted gross income drops to 69,000 dollars, and after the 16,100 dollar standard deduction the taxable figure is 52,900 dollars. The first 12,400 dollars of that is taxed at 10 percent for 1,240 dollars, the next 38,000 dollars at 12 percent for 4,560 dollars, and only the final 2,500 dollars touches the 22 percent bracket, adding 550 dollars. Federal income tax totals 6,350 dollars.
Three rates fall out of that one bill. Against taxable income the effective federal rate is 12.00 percent. Against gross wages it is 8.47 percent. FICA adds 5,737.50 dollars, exactly 7.65 percent of the full 75,000, because the wage sits well under the Social Security cap. With no state tax, the total bill is 12,087.50 dollars and the combined effective rate is 16.12 percent, leaving 62,912.50 dollars of net pay. The marginal bracket said 22 percent. The paycheck lost 16.1 percent. Both numbers are true; they measure different things.
| Bracket slice (taxable income $52,900) | Income in slice | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| 10% bracket (first $12,400) | $12,400.00 | $1,240.00 |
| 12% bracket (to $50,400) | $38,000.00 | $4,560.00 |
| 22% bracket (to $105,700) | $2,500.00 | $550.00 |
| Federal income tax | $52,900.00 | $6,350.00 |
The table is the whole argument in three rows. Two thirds of the taxable income is priced at 12 percent or less, and the 22 percent bracket only touches 2,500 dollars. The 16,100 dollars the standard deduction removed never appears in the table at all. Stack FICA and the full picture looks like this: federal income tax 8.47 percent of gross, FICA 7.65 percent, state tax zero, combined 16.12 percent.
The combined effective rate climbs with income, but not smoothly, and the flat spots are the interesting part. Run the same single-filer inputs at a few income levels and the progression looks like this.
| Scenario (single filer, standard deduction) | Combined effective rate | Net pay |
|---|---|---|
| $40,000 wages, $2,000 401k | 13.60% | $34,560.00 |
| $75,000 wages, $6,000 401k (default) | 16.12% | $62,912.50 |
| $200,000 wages, $14,000 401k | 23.86% | $152,287.00 |
| $300,000 wages, $20,000 401k | 25.94% | $222,176.75 |
| $450,000 wages, $30,000 401k, married joint | 21.78% | $351,968.00 |
Two reversals hide in that table. Between 200,000 and 300,000 dollars the combined rate gains barely two points even though the marginal bracket jumps from 24 to 35 percent, because the 6.2 percent Social Security tax stops at the 184,500 dollar wage base and stops adding anything. And the final row is a married couple earning 450,000 dollars whose combined rate of 21.78 percent is lower than the single earner at 300,000, because joint brackets are nearly twice as wide and the standard deduction is doubled. Income alone does not determine the rate; filing status and the wage base do real work.
State tax shifts the whole ladder up. The 200,000 dollar earner pays 23.86 percent combined with no state income tax; add a flat 5 percent state and the same person loses 28.86 percent of gross, exactly five points more, or 10,000 dollars a year. That is the comparison that decides whether a job offer in Texas beats one in Illinois, and no bracket table answers it.
Three honest uses. First, budgeting: net pay is gross times one minus the combined effective rate, so the calculator's last row is your planning number. Second, the 401k decision: raising the pre-tax contribution in the default example by 1,000 dollars saves 220 dollars of federal tax at the 22 percent marginal rate, and the calculator's taxable-income rate shows the average value of all such dollars, which is lower and more realistic. Third, offer comparison: two salaries that look identical compare differently once each state's rate goes into the combined figure.
One common misuse to avoid. The effective rate is not the right lens for choosing between a Roth and a traditional 401k, because that decision prices the marginal dollars you contribute and the marginal dollars you will withdraw. For that question the Roth vs Traditional IRA calculator runs the comparison properly. Likewise, if the question is how much of each paycheck actually arrives, the take-home pay calculator breaks the same math down per pay period, and the W-4 withholding calculator covers the gap between what you owe at the effective rate and what payroll withholds. For converting between pay frequencies once the net figure is known, the salary to hourly calculator handles the arithmetic.
The marginal rate is the tax on your next dollar of income, and it is the number printed next to your bracket. The effective rate is total tax divided by income, which is what you actually lose. In the default example a single filer with 75,000 dollars of wages sits in the 22 percent bracket but pays an effective federal rate of 8.47 percent of gross pay, because the first 12,400 dollars of taxable income is taxed at 10 percent and the standard deduction removes 16,100 dollars from tax entirely.
Both are legitimate, and they answer different questions. The rate on taxable income measures how the brackets treat the income that survived deductions. The rate on gross pay measures what your paycheck actually loses, which is the number that matters for budgeting, comparing job offers, or deciding whether a raise moves the needle. This calculator shows both, and the combined rate on gross pay is the most honest single figure because it includes FICA and state tax.
Three mechanisms do the work. The standard deduction removes a slice of income from tax entirely, which is worth 16,100 dollars for a single filer in 2026. The bracket system taxes each slice at its own rate, so only the last portion of income touches your top bracket. And payroll taxes, which feel like a flat 7.65 percent, are regressive above the Social Security wage base, so very high earners pay a lower FICA rate on gross income than middle earners.
It lowers federal and state income tax but not FICA. Pre-tax 401k contributions are exempt from income tax, so in the default example a 6,000 dollar contribution moves 6,000 dollars out of the 22 percent bracket and saves 1,320 dollars federally. Social Security and Medicare taxes still apply to the full wage, so the combined effective rate falls by less than the income tax rate alone. Roth contributions lower neither rate today, but withdrawals in retirement are tax free.
There is no single normal, but the shape is predictable. A single filer earning 40,000 dollars pays roughly 13.6 percent of gross pay once federal income tax and FICA are combined. At 75,000 dollars the combined rate runs near 16 percent, at 200,000 dollars near 24 percent in a no-income-tax state, and past the Social Security wage base the combined rate grows more slowly because FICA stops rising. State income tax can add one to seven percentage points depending on where you live.
No. Bracket rates apply to income within each bracket only, so a raise that crosses into the 22 percent bracket taxes just the dollars above the 12 percent ceiling at 22 percent and leaves every dollar below it untouched. Take-home pay always rises with a gross raise. The effective rate climbs slowly for the same reason, which is why the gap between the marginal and effective rate is the clearest picture of how progressive the bracket system actually is.
All calculation logic on this page is implemented from the primary documents below. Each one is listed with the figure it supplies, so any rate or threshold in the result can be traced back to its published source.
Current-year brackets and withholding rules, with the source named.