How every figure on this site is calculated

All federal figures come from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, published 9 October 2025, which sets the 2026 inflation adjustments and incorporates the changes made by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The standard deduction is $16,100 for single filers, $32,200 for married couples filing jointly and $24,150 for heads of household, with an additional $2,050 (single) or $1,650 per spouse for filers aged 65 or over, which the calculator does not apply because it has no age input.

Social Security is withheld at 6.2% of wages up to $184,500, the 2026 wage base announced by the Social Security Administration in October 2025 (up from $176,100). Medicare is 1.45% of all wages with no cap, plus the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages above $200,000 for single filers and $250,000 for married couples, thresholds that are fixed in law and not indexed.

The federal income tax figure is the annual liability under the brackets, spread evenly across pay periods. Actual withholding follows the employee's Form W-4 and the IRS percentage-method tables, which produce a similar but not identical figure per paycheck; the difference is reconciled on the annual return. The calculator does not apply the child tax credit, earned income credit or any other federal credit.

State rates, brackets, standard deductions and exemptions for all 50 states and DC are compiled from the Tax Foundation's annual "State Individual Income Tax Rates and Brackets, 2026" report, which aggregates each state's published figures, and cross-checked against the state revenue department page linked on each state page and against the Tax Foundation's list of changes effective 1 January 2026. 9 jurisdictions tax no wages, 15 apply a single rate, and the rest use graduated brackets.

The state calculation follows each state's own structure: a standard deduction where the state has one, personal and dependent exemptions applied as a deduction from income or, where the state structures them that way (California, Delaware, Oregon, Nebraska, Arkansas, Iowa, Utah, Arizona's dependent credit), as a credit against tax. Seven states that start from federal taxable income (Colorado, Idaho, Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Carolina, plus DC) use the federal standard deduction. Single and head-of-household filers use the single schedule; married filing jointly uses the joint schedule.

Three states allow a deduction for federal income tax paid and the calculator applies it: Alabama, Missouri, Oregon. Alabama's is unlimited; Missouri's is capped at $5,000 single and $10,000 married; Oregon's at about $8,250, with a phase-out at higher incomes that is not modelled.

• Local income taxes. Cities, counties and school districts in eleven states levy income taxes of their own, from Indiana's county rates to New York City's 3.876% and Maryland's 2.25% to 3.2% county tax. The rate depends on the exact place of residence and often of work, so each state page names its local taxes and says they are excluded rather than guessing.
• State payroll taxes other than California SDI. Paid family leave, disability and similar employee premiums exist in about fifteen states at rates from 0.1% to 1.3% of wages. Most are capped and several change annually; each state page names its programme. California's is included because it has no cap and is large.
• Phase-outs and recapture. Several states reduce deductions or exemptions at higher incomes (Wisconsin's sliding standard deduction, Rhode Island's exemption phase-out, New York's and Connecticut's benefit recapture). Connecticut's exemption phase-out is modelled because it affects ordinary salaries; the others are noted on the state page and omitted.
• W-4 elections, benefits and garnishments. Extra withholding, multiple-jobs adjustments, health, dental, HSA and commuter deductions and any court-ordered withholding all change a real paycheck and are outside the calculator's scope unless entered as a pre-tax amount.
• Itemised deductions and credits. The calculator assumes the standard deduction at both levels.

Every calculation lives in one code module that reads from the data files and nothing else; no page carries its own rate or threshold. That module is covered by a test suite of hand-worked examples: the federal tax on $60,000 and $150,000, the FICA cap and Additional Medicare threshold, and state results for Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, California, Alabama, Missouri, Connecticut and Kansas, each computed by hand from the published brackets and compared to the code's output to the cent. A further test runs every jurisdiction at $75,000 married with one dependent and checks that each produces a finite, sensible result. The tests run before every deployment and a failure blocks it.

The figures quoted in the written text on each state page (for example, the state tax on a $60,000 salary) are generated by the same module and checked against the copy, so the words and the calculator cannot disagree.

Every dataset carries the date it was last verified against its source, shown on each page. A check that runs before every deployment fails if any dataset is more than twelve months old, so the annual update cannot be skipped without taking the site offline. Federal figures are updated when the IRS publishes the following year's revenue procedure in October or November; state figures when the Tax Foundation's January report and the states' own January changes are published. Mid-year changes, which a few states make, are applied when they take effect and the verified date is moved.

Corrections: if a figure here disagrees with the source it cites, the source is right and the site is wrong. Write to hello@statefigures.com with the page and the figure and it will be checked and fixed.