Paycheck Calculator by State

Gross pay is a headline number that almost nobody receives. Between it and your bank account sit four separate calculations, each with its own base, its own thresholds and its own exceptions — and they do not stack the way people assume.

Federal income tax comes first, but it applies to your taxable income, not your salary. The standard deduction — $16,100 for a single filer in 2026 — comes off before any bracket is touched, and then the seven federal brackets apply progressively. Only income above each threshold is taxed at that band's rate, which is why your effective rate always lands well below your marginal rate.

FICA works on a completely different base. Social Security takes 6.2% of wages up to the annual wage base of $184,500, then stops entirely. Medicare takes 1.45% of everything with no ceiling, plus an additional 0.9% above $200,000 for single filers. Crucially, neither is reduced by your 401(k) contributions — a point that changes the maths of retirement saving more than most people realise.

State income tax is where the geography comes in, and it varies more than any other line. Nine states take nothing. Others reach into double digits. And in a dozen states, cities and counties add a further layer on top of that.

The single biggest source of error in online paycheck estimates is local income tax. It applies in more states than people expect, and in some of them it is larger than the state tax itself.

Ohio is the clearest case: several hundred municipalities levy an income tax between 1% and 3%, and more than six hundred school districts levy a separate one. An Ohio worker in Columbus or Cleveland can pay more locally than to the state. Pennsylvania municipalities levy an Earned Income Tax, typically 1%, with Philadelphia charging considerably more. Every Maryland county adds between 2.25% and 3.20%. Every Indiana county levies its own rate. New York City residents pay a city income tax on top of the state's. Kentucky counties and cities levy occupational taxes on gross wages with no deductions at all.

These are not rounding errors. For a $75,000 earner, a 2.5% local rate is close to $1,900 a year. Any estimate that omits it will overstate take-home pay by more than most people's monthly grocery bill.

The calculator above includes a local rate field for every state where one applies, and each state guide explains who pays it, whether it follows your home or your workplace, and roughly what to expect.

A growing number of states fund paid leave, disability or unemployment insurance through employee payroll deductions that have nothing to do with income tax — and they appear even in states with no income tax at all.

Washington is the clearest example. It has no income tax, but it withholds both a Paid Family and Medical Leave premium and the WA Cares Fund long-term care premium, the latter uncapped. California's State Disability Insurance lost its wage ceiling entirely in 2024, turning it into a 1.3% flat tax on every dollar earned. New Jersey is one of the few states where employees contribute to unemployment insurance. Rhode Island's Temporary Disability Insurance, the oldest such programme in the country, is funded by employees alone. Minnesota's Paid Leave began deducting in January 2026; Maine's began in 2025.

These are individually small — typically between 0.2% and 1.3% — but they are mandatory, they are easy to forget, and several are new enough that people have not yet seen them on a payslip. Every state guide lists whichever apply, and the calculator includes them in the total.

A paycheck calculator produces a well-informed projection, not a copy of your payslip. Several things it cannot know will move your actual number.

Your W-4 is the largest. Withholding is driven by what you filed — dependants claimed, multiple jobs indicated, extra withholding requested — and two people on identical salaries can have quite different withholding as a result. Employer-specific benefits matter too: pre-tax health premiums, HSA and FSA contributions, commuter benefits, and any post-tax items such as union dues, garnishments or Roth 401(k) contributions.

Timing matters as well. Withholding is calculated as though your current rate of pay continued all year, so a bonus month is over-withheld and a partial year of work usually results in a refund. Seasonal workers see this most acutely.

Use the figures here to compare states, to sanity-check a job offer, or to see what changing your 401(k) rate would actually do. For your exact withholding, the authority is your own payslip and the IRS Tax Withholding Estimator.