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By Paycheck Calculators Editorial Team • Last updated 2026-11-08

Disclaimer

Effective date: 2026-11-08. Last updated: 2026-11-08.

Calculator results are estimates based on simplified 2026 tables. They are not tax advice, financial advice, or a guarantee of your actual pay. Your employer, state tax authority, and a tax professional are the authoritative sources for your situation.

Tax and financial disclaimer

Nothing on this site is tax advice, financial advice, or legal advice. The calculators and guides are general information, written for a general reader. They do not take into account your full situation — your other income, your spouse's income, your deductions beyond the ones listed, local taxes, tips, bonuses, stock pay, or any other detail that can change what you owe. Do not use a result from this site to file a tax return, to decide how much tax to pay, or to make a financial decision. If you need advice for your own situation, talk to a qualified tax professional, and bring the breakdown from this site with you so you can compare it line by line.

Estimates, not your exact pay

Every number on this site is an estimate. The paycheck calculator uses simplified 2026 federal brackets, not the full IRS tables. Your employer figures your real withholding from your W-4 and IRS Publication 15-T, and their number can be different from ours — sometimes by a little, sometimes by more, if your situation has details our calculator does not ask about. The worked examples on the site are checked against the calculators, but they are examples, not a promise. Use the results as a rough check, not as the final word.

Here is a real example of the gap. Take $60,000 a year, single, paid every two weeks, in Texas, with 5% to a 401(k) and $120 a paycheck for health cover. Our calculator says take-home is $1,740.12 a period. That is a fair estimate. But if your employer also takes out money for a dental plan, a flexible spending account, or a local tax, your real paycheck will be lower, and our calculator will not know about it. The same goes the other way: if your W-4 asks for extra withholding, your real take-home will be lower than our number.

State tax is a simplified estimate

State tax is where the estimates are roughest, so here is exactly what we do. Texas, Florida and the other states with no state income tax come out at $0, and that part is exact. California uses simplified CA brackets, and the page labels that as an estimate — the real California tax can be different, because California has its own credits, deductions and brackets that our simple model does not cover. Every other state uses a flat-rate estimate: we take your taxable federal income and apply one rate for that state. Real state tax is not flat — it has its own brackets, standard deductions and credits — so for states other than Texas and California, treat the state tax line as a rough guess, and check the real number with your state tax authority or a tax professional.

Check your figures before you act

Before you act on any number from this site, check it against the sources we name: IRS Publication 15-T for federal withholding, IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 for the 2026 standard deduction ($16,100 single / $32,200 married filing jointly), your W-4 for your filing choices, and your pay stub for what your employer actually took out. The Social Security wage base for 2026 is $184,500, Social Security is 6.2% and Medicare is 1.45%, with an extra 0.9% on wages over $200,000. If the number on your pay stub and the number on this site do not match, trust your pay stub and your employer — and tell us through the Contact page, so we can check whether our figure needs fixing.

No professional relationship

Using this site does not create a professional relationship between you and us. We are not your tax adviser, your financial adviser, your accountant, or your lawyer, and reading this site or using a calculator does not make us one. We do not review your tax return, we do not represent you before the IRS or any state tax authority, and we do not take responsibility for any decision you make based on a number you saw here.

No guarantee

We work to keep the figures right and we update them each January, but we do not guarantee that any number on this site is correct, complete, or up to date at the time you read it. Tax law changes, and our simplified tables cannot cover every case. The site is provided as-is, and you use it at your own risk. If you find a mistake, please tell us — that is how the site gets better.