What a raise is actually worth after tax — not the headline percentage. Runs your real brackets before and after, so you see what lands in your pocket.
This compares your income tax before and after the raise, so the after-tax figure is the part the raise actually puts in your pocket. It excludes payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare), the 0.9% additional Medicare tax, the net investment income tax, the alternative minimum tax and any credits, and it assumes your pre-tax deductions and filing status do not change. State tax assumes your state's taxable base equals the federal one.
A 5% raise is not a 5% pay rise. The extra money is taxed at your marginal rate — the rate on your top dollars — which is almost always higher than the average rate on your whole salary. This calculator runs your complete tax bill twice, once at your current salary and once at the new one, and reports the difference. That is the only honest way to answer “what does this raise actually pay me?”
The full bar is your gross raise. The green part is what reaches your bank account; the rest is the tax the raise itself caused.
A single filer in Texas earning $65,000, no pre-tax deductions, offered a 5% raise.
See what a raise actually pays you after tax. Runs your real brackets before and after, shows the tax the raise causes, and explains why a higher bracket never cuts your take-home.
The reason a 5% raise does not feel like 5% is that the extra money is taxed at the rate on your top dollars, while your existing salary is taxed at a blend of every bracket below it. If you are in the 22% bracket with an 11% effective rate, the raise is taxed at 22%, not 11%. That is not a flaw in the system — it is how a progressive tax is meant to work — but it does mean the headline percentage in an offer letter overstates what you will actually receive, sometimes by a third or more.
Rather than applying a single marginal rate to the raise, this tool computes your complete tax bill at your current salary and again at the new salary, then reports the difference. That approach handles the awkward cases correctly without any special-casing: a raise that crosses a bracket boundary is taxed partly at the old rate and partly at the new one, pre-tax deductions keep their effect, and state tax is recomputed on the new figure. It also means the answer is consistent with the income tax calculator on this site, because both use the same brackets and the same code.
This is the most persistent myth in personal finance, and it is worth being precise about why it is false. Tax brackets are marginal: moving into the 24% bracket does not tax your whole salary at 24%, it taxes only the dollars above the threshold at 24%, leaving everything below it at the lower rates it already faced. Crossing a threshold therefore always leaves you with more money than not crossing it. The calculator checks this rather than assuming it — if the take-home figure ever fell after a raise, that would indicate a broken dataset or formula, and the page says so explicitly.
The figure here covers federal and state income tax. It does not include Social Security and Medicare, which take a further 7.65% of most wage income up to the wage base — so your actual take-home rise will be a little smaller than shown. High earners also face the 0.9% additional Medicare tax above the threshold. The net investment income tax, the alternative minimum tax and credits such as the Child Tax Credit are excluded too. The comparison also holds your pre-tax deductions and filing status constant, which is right for judging a raise but wrong if the raise comes with a promotion that changes either.
The after-tax figure is the number to anchor on, because it is the one you will actually feel each month. It also reframes the conversation usefully: if a 5% raise nets you $180 a month, you can weigh that against the extra responsibility being asked of you, and you can ask for a figure that nets what you actually need rather than a round percentage. Remember that non-salary levers — a larger 401(k) match, an HSA contribution, additional paid leave, or a one-off bonus — are often cheaper for an employer to give and can be worth more to you after tax than the equivalent salary increase.
It depends on your marginal rate. The raise is taxed at the rate on your top dollars, not your average rate, so if you are in the 22% bracket you keep about 78 cents of each extra dollar before state tax. Enter your details above for the exact figure — this calculator computes your full tax bill before and after, so bracket crossings and deductions are handled correctly.
No. Brackets are marginal, so only the income above each threshold is taxed at the higher rate — the rest keeps its old rate. Earning more always leaves you with more take-home pay. If a pay rise ever seemed to reduce your net pay, the cause was almost always a change in withholding or a lost benefit, not the bracket itself.
Because income tax is progressive and the raise sits on top of your existing income, where the rate is highest. Dividing the gross raise by twelve gives you the pre-tax monthly increase; the figure this tool reports is what remains after the extra income tax the raise triggers.
No. It covers federal and state income tax only. Payroll taxes take a further 7.65% of most wage income up to the Social Security wage base, and high earners pay an additional 0.9% Medicare tax above the threshold. Your real take-home increase will therefore be slightly smaller than the figure shown.
Yes. Enter a negative percentage and the calculator runs the same comparison in reverse, showing how much of the cut your tax bill absorbs. Because the reduction comes off your top dollars, it is taxed at your marginal rate, so a pay cut costs you less after tax than the headline figure suggests — the mirror image of the raise.
Why did the math book look so sad?
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