Methodology & data sources

Every number on PaycheckTools comes from a single calculation engine with one job: estimate U.S. take-home pay for tax year 2026 as transparently as possible. This page documents exactly where the data comes from, how the math works, what we deliberately leave out, and how we keep it current. Data last verified: June 2026.

Data sources

• Federal income tax — 2026 brackets and standard deductions ($16,100 single / $32,200 married filing jointly / $24,150 head of household) as published by the IRS in its annual inflation-adjustment revenue procedure, reflecting the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) changes.
• Social Security & Medicare (FICA) — the 2026 Social Security wage base ($184,500) from the Social Security Administration, the 6.2% / 1.45% rates, and the statutory 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax thresholds.
• State income tax — 2026 rates, brackets, and state standard deductions for all 50 states and D.C., primarily from the Tax Foundation'sannual "State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets" survey, cross-checked against state revenue department publications. Single and married schedules are modeled separately for every graduated-tax state.
• Overtime & bonus rules— FLSA time-and-a-half requirements and the IRS 22% / 37% supplemental withholding rates, plus each state's published supplemental withholding rate for bonuses.

How the calculation works

1. Pre-tax deductions you enter are subtracted from gross salary.
2. Federal taxable income = gross − pre-tax deductions − standard deduction for your filing status; the progressive brackets are then applied marginally.
3. FICA is computed on gross wages before most pre-tax deductions: Social Security up to the wage base, Medicare on everything, plus the 0.9% surtax above the statutory thresholds.
4. State tax applies your state's standard deduction and its flat rate or marginal brackets (head of household uses the single schedule).
5. Take-home pay = gross − federal − FICA − state, divided across your pay frequency.

All calculations run in your browser — salaries you type are never sent to a server, logged, or stored.

What we deliberately exclude

These estimators favor clarity over false precision. Known simplifications, flagged with an amber banner on affected state pages:

• Local income taxes — NYC and Yonkers, Maryland county taxes, Ohio/Kentucky/Pennsylvania municipal taxes, and similar.
• State payroll programs — California SDI, New Jersey SUI/SDI/FLI, Washington long-term care and paid-leave premiums, and other state insurance deductions.
• Credits and exemptions— personal/dependent exemptions, earned income and child tax credits, Utah's taxpayer credit, low-income tables, and itemized deductions.
• Filing-time items — the 2025–2028 federal tip/overtime deductions, capital gains, and anything else settled on a return rather than in a paycheck.

In short: our figures are close to a typical W-2 paycheck for a wage earner taking the standard deduction, and they are estimates — not tax advice and not a payroll system. See the disclaimer.

Verification and update policy

• Tax-year data is re-extracted and re-verified annually when the IRS, SSA, and Tax Foundation publish new figures, and the site's tax year is bumped in one place so every page and example updates together.
• Engine results are hand-checked against manual bracket calculations for benchmark cases (e.g., California single $75,000, married $150,000) before each data update ships.
• Guides display their last-updated date and reflect the same 2026 dataset as the calculators.

Corrections

If any figure looks wrong — a bracket, a deduction, a state rate — we want to know. Reach us via the contact page with the state and salary you tested, and we will check it against the primary sources and fix promptly. Accuracy is the entire value of this site.

Read more about the project on the about page, or start with the paycheck calculator.