Maine Paycheck Calculator

Maine's Paid Family and Medical Leave programme began collecting contributions in January 2025, with benefits following in 2026. The total contribution is 1% of wages for employers with 15 or more employees, split evenly — so the employee share is 0.5%.

Smaller employers, with fewer than 15 employees, face a lower total contribution of 0.5%, but may deduct the full amount from employee wages. The practical result is that the employee share is up to 0.5% regardless of employer size, capped at the Social Security wage base.

The programme provides up to twelve weeks of paid leave for family or medical reasons, with wage replacement weighted toward lower earners. Because contributions started a full year before benefits became available, many Maine workers paid in for a year before anyone could claim.

Maine's 5.8% entry rate is high — it exceeds the top rate in Arizona, Indiana, Pennsylvania, North Dakota and several others. The top rate of 7.15% applies above roughly $64,800 of taxable income for single filers.

What prevents this from being worse is indexing. Maine adjusts both its bracket thresholds and its standard deduction annually for inflation, so bracket creep does not quietly push workers into higher bands as wages rise with prices. A number of states with lower headline rates do not index, and their effective burden rises over time as a result.

Maine also phases out its standard deduction for higher earners, which produces an elevated effective marginal rate through the phase-out range — the same mechanism seen in Wisconsin.

Maine has one of the most seasonal labour markets in the country, concentrated in tourism, hospitality and fishing. For workers whose earnings are compressed into a few months, withholding calculated per pay period can substantially overshoot the annual liability, since each paycheck is taxed as though that rate of pay continued all year. The overpayment comes back at filing, but it means take-home pay during the season understates the true annual position.

Maine exempts Social Security benefits entirely. It also offers a pension income deduction that has been increased in recent years, now covering a substantial amount of other retirement income per person.

No Maine municipality levies an income tax, so the payslip carries state income tax and the Paid Leave contribution alongside federal deductions.