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Methodology & sources

TakeHome estimates take-home pay and taxes for tax year 2026. This page explains exactly where our numbers come from, how the calculators combine them, and what they leave out.

How the estimate works

Every calculator uses one shared engine. It follows an annual-liability method:

  1. Annualize your pay (salary, or hourly rate × hours × paid weeks, plus FLSA overtime at 1.5× over 40 hours a week).
  2. Subtract pre-tax deductions: traditional 401(k) (capped at the elective limit for your age, including catch-ups) and Section 125 benefits.
  3. Federal income tax: adjusted gross income minus the standard deduction and any 2025–2028 senior, overtime and tips deductions you enter, taxed through the progressive brackets, minus the nonrefundable part of the Child Tax Credit.
  4. FICA: Social Security up to the wage base, Medicare on all wages, Additional Medicare Tax above the threshold for your filing status. Section 125 benefits reduce FICA wages; 401(k) deferrals do not.
  5. State income tax from each state’s file: its starting point (federal AGI, federal taxable income, or its own definition of income), standard deduction or exemption (as a deduction or a credit), brackets by filing status (married filing separately uses single brackets unless the state publishes its own), and a deduction for federal tax where the state allows one. Where a state’s file records them, the engine also applies income-based rules: deductions, exemptions and credits that phase out as income rises (Alabama, Connecticut, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Wisconsin); brackets written as a fixed base amount plus a rate (Ohio); a different schedule above an income threshold (Arkansas); income-banded add-backs and percentage credits (Arkansas, Connecticut); high-income recapture of the lower brackets (New York); and a federal-tax deduction that depends on income (Missouri). These rules use federal AGI as the income measure, which can differ slightly from a state’s own AGI.
  6. Employee-paid state payroll taxes: rate × wages up to the wage base, or capped at the annual maximum.
  7. Local income tax where the state has mandatory local taxes and you choose a locality, on the basis the locality uses (wages, state taxable income, a percentage of state tax, or a flat amount per period).
  8. Divide each annual amount by your number of pay periods.

This is not the IRS Publication 15-T withholding method. Employers withhold using those tables and your Form W-4, so a real paycheck can differ by a few dollars — or more if your W-4 has adjustments. Over a full year, the annual-liability estimate is closer to what you will actually owe.

Where a dataset leaves a value empty because the official source does not publish it (for example a phase-out rate), the engine does not guess. It takes the conservative path — usually leaving out the deduction above the point where the phase-out starts — and says so in the assumptions under the result.

Data sources

We use only official publishers: the IRS, the Social Security Administration, state departments of revenue or taxation, state labor departments (for payroll taxes) and city or county finance departments (for local taxes). Every figure records its source URL and the date we read it. If a 2026 figure has not been published, the dataset says so and the state is marked low confidence; we never carry an old number forward silently.

Federal dataset

Brackets, standard deductions, 2025–2028 deductions, Child Tax Credit, Social Security and Medicare, supplemental withholding and retirement limits (last read 2026-10-07):

State income tax datasets

51 jurisdictions have a published file. Each state page lists its own sources and dates; summary:

Lower-confidence states (some 2026 figures not yet published): Arizona, District of Columbia, Idaho, Maryland, Oregon, Utah, Vermont. Their pages show a visible data-confidence note.

State payroll taxes

Local income taxes

What we don’t model

Across all calculators:

  • Itemized deductions (we use the standard deduction)
  • Credits other than the Child Tax Credit (for example the Earned Income Tax Credit, education and dependent care credits)
  • W-4 entries (extra withholding, other income, deductions) and the IRS Publication 15-T withholding tables
  • Income other than these wages (interest, dividends, capital gains, a spouse’s pay)
  • The rule that requires catch-up contributions to be Roth for higher earners
  • Employer contributions and taxable fringe benefits
  • Working in one state while living in another (reciprocity agreements and credits for taxes paid to another state).
  • State supplemental (bonus) withholding rates, and state credits other than personal exemption credits and the income-banded credits recorded in a state’s file (each state page lists what is left out).
  • Local tax credits between localities and local taxes not listed as mandatory in our data.

Each state file adds its own “not modeled” list, shown on the state page and under every paycheck result for that state.

Testing

The engine is a single TypeScript module used by every page. It is covered by an automated test suite of hand-computed cases — bracket edges, the Social Security wage base, Additional Medicare Tax, 401(k) limits and catch-ups, Section 125 vs 401(k), Child Tax Credit limits, flat, graduated and no-tax states, exemption credits, state phase-outs (linear, stepped and income-banded), bracket base amounts, alternate schedules, banded adjustments, high-income recapture, local tax bases and pay-frequency conversions — plus regression cases that check real state files against hand calculations from the official schedules. Worked examples and FAQ figures on our pages are generated from the same engine at build time, so the copy always matches the calculator.

Update schedule

  • Every January, when the IRS, SSA and states publish the new year’s figures (some arrive in late fall; we update as they do).
  • Whenever a state changes rates mid-year, or a law changes federal figures.
  • When readers report an error — tell us and we will check it against the official source.

Questions about a specific figure? See our editorial policy or contact us.