Calculator
What lands in your account each payday
Turn a yearly salary into take-home pay after federal tax, Social Security, Medicare and your state, with your 401(k) and health deductions taken out first.
Data last checked . Every source is listed below.
Take-home pay, every two weeks
Out of $68,000 a year, $12,262 goes to tax and $49,938 reaches your account.
Where it goes
- Take-home pay$49,93873%
- Federal income tax$5,2848%
- Social Security and Medicare$5,0187%
- West Virginia and local tax$1,9603%
- 401(k), health and HSA$5,8009%
- Take-home for the whole year
- $49,93873.4% of your pay
- Federal income tax
- $5,284
- Social Security and Medicare
- $5,018often called FICA
- West Virginia income tax
- $1,960
- Taken before tax
- $5,800401(k), health and HSA
A raise of $1,000 a year would add about $716 to your take-home, which is 72 cents of each extra dollar. Saving one more point of pay in the 401(k) puts $680 a year in the account and lowers your take-home by only $569.
For information only: not advice, a recommendation or an offer. We take care, but our sources can lag and so can we, so a figure may be out of date. Official figures come from lenders, plans, the IRS or Social Security.
What moves the number
The few things that change the answer the most, in plain terms.
- Where you live
- Nine states charge no tax on wages; others take a flat share or a graduated one. A few add payroll premiums for disability or paid leave that never show up on a federal tax form.
- Filing status
- Married couples filing together have wider brackets and a bigger standard deduction than a single filer, so the same pay is taxed less.
- Money taken before tax
- Traditional 401(k), health premiums and HSA contributions come out of pay before income tax, so your take-home falls by less than you save.
- Social Security and Medicare
- These are flat shares of pay. Social Security stops once your pay passes a yearly limit; Medicare does not.
- Children
- The federal child tax credit lowers income tax for each child under 17. This tool spreads it across your paychecks, which is how most people feel it.
The working
Step by step, with the numbers from the starting example, so you can check it on paper.
- Start with $68,000 a year. Money taken before tax ($3,400 to a 401(k) and $2,400 for health and HSA) comes off first.
- Social Security takes 6.2% of pay up to $184,500, and Medicare takes 1.45% of all pay. Together that is $5,018. Health and HSA money is not taxed for either.
- Federal income tax is worked out on what is left after the standard deduction, using the 2026 brackets for your filing status. That comes to $5,284.
- West Virginia: income tax of $1,960 under its own rules.
- Take-home for the year is $49,938. Split over 26 paychecks, that is $1,920.69 each.
- Your own paycheck can differ slightly: employers withhold using IRS tables and the forms you filled in, and the exact tax is settled when you file.
Try a different case
Each opens the calculator with the numbers filled in.
What we assumed
Where a number is an example, we say so.
- Published, secondhandThe 2026 federal brackets, standard deductions and child tax credit come from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32.
- Published, secondhandSocial Security is 6.2% of pay up to $184,500 and Medicare is 1.45%, with 0.9% more above $200,000.
- Published, secondhandState income tax follows each state's 2026 rules for brackets, deductions and exemptions. Head of household and married filing separately use single brackets in states that set their own. A few states are marked as less certain in our data and may be off.
- Our estimateOne job, wages only: no side income, no tips or overtime deductions, and no itemizing.
- Our estimateYearly tax is spread evenly over every paycheck. Real withholding can be uneven, for example with bonuses.
- Our estimateLocal taxes are the single rate you enter. Some places also charge flat or per-head local fees that are not included.
Sources
- Published, secondhandInternal Revenue Service, Rev. Proc. 2025-32: 2026 tax tables, standard deduction and child tax credit amounts. Data year 2026, checked 2026-10-10.
- Published, secondhandSocial Security Administration, Contribution and Benefit Base: 2026 wage limit of $184,500. Data year 2026, checked 2026-10-10.
- Published, secondhandState income tax rules for 2026, compiled from the Tax Foundation's state rate tables and state agency pages (see the header of the state data file for the full list). Data year 2026, checked 2026-10-29.