Take-home pay after a raise calculator
A raise is not taxed at a headline number. Social Security stops at a wage base, Medicare has an extra 0.9% above a filing-status threshold, and federal tax only applies its higher rate to the slice of the raise that actually sits inside the higher bracket. Below, the exact amount a raise nets once each of those runs.
Worked example — Net raise you'll actually see, on $6,000: $4,221. $72,000 to $78,000, single, biweekly pay, federal and FICA only
What your own raise nets
Enter the old and new salary and a filing status. The chart sweeps the same raise across a ladder of starting salaries so the wage-base and bracket kinks are visible, not just the single number your own inputs produce.
$72,000 to $78,000, single: Both salaries sit inside the same 22% federal bracket, so this is the plain case: FICA plus one marginal rate, nothing crossing.
Pay frequency 1
Holds the raise at $6,000 and sweeps the starting salary. The line is straight between exact breakpoints: where the raise starts or stops crossing the $184,500 Social Security wage base, the $200,000 Additional Medicare threshold, or a federal bracket edge. Between two breakpoints the real function is exactly linear, so nothing between the plotted points is guessed.
How much of a $6,000 raise you will actually see
On a $72,000 salary moving to $78,000 (single, biweekly pay), a $6,000 raise nets $4,221, or 70.3% of the raise itself. That is $372 of Social Security tax, $87 of Medicare tax, and $1,320 of federal income tax, all of it at the flat 22% marginal rate because both the old and new salary sit inside the same bracket. Per biweekly paycheque that is $230.77 gross and $162.35 net.
A raise that instead crosses a bracket keeps less of itself even before state tax: the same $20,000 raise from $185,000 to $205,000 moves the marginal rate from 24% to 32% and nets 73.0%.
Net share of a raise by salary and filing status
The same $6,000 raise, applied on top of eight starting salaries, for both filing statuses. Read down a column for where the Social Security wage base and the Additional Medicare threshold bite: the single column crosses the $184,500 wage base between $180,000 and $195,000, and the $200,000 single Additional Medicare threshold between $195,000 and $245,000. The joint column does not reach its own, higher $250,000 threshold until past $245,000.
| Starting salary | Net raise, single | Net share, single | Net raise, married filing jointly | Net share, married filing jointly |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $50,000 | $4,261 | 71.0% | $4,821 | 80.3% |
| $75,000 | $4,221 | 70.3% | $4,821 | 80.3% |
| $100,000 | $4,215 | 70.3% | $4,301 | 71.7% |
| $150,000 | $4,101 | 68.3% | $4,221 | 70.3% |
| $180,000 | $4,194 | 69.9% | $4,314 | 71.9% |
| $195,000 | $4,464 | 74.4% | $4,593 | 76.5% |
| $245,000 | $3,939 | 65.6% | $4,464 | 74.4% |
| $300,000 | $3,759 | 62.6% | $4,419 | 73.7% |
Can a raise ever leave you worse off?
Not on federal and FICA tax alone. Every dollar of a raise is taxed at the rate for the bracket it actually falls in, never a higher rate applied retroactively to dollars already taxed at a lower one, so net take-home only ever rises with gross pay under this arithmetic. Even a raise that jumps from the 35% bracket into the top 37% bracket, at $640,000 to $650,000, still nets $6,077 of its $10,000, or 60.8%.
What this cannot see is a benefit cliff: income-tested programs (some premium tax credits, some subsidised housing and childcare, some student aid) can phase out faster than the marginal tax rate rises, which is a real way a raise can cost you more in lost benefits than it pays in extra salary. That is a program rule, not a tax rate, and it is outside what this calculator, or any tax-bracket arithmetic, can price without knowing which programs apply to you.
Gross raise vs net raise per paycheque
Two real raises, same filing status, one inside a bracket and one crossing it.
| Raise | Gross, per paycheque | Net, per paycheque | Net share |
|---|---|---|---|
| $72,000 to $78,000 | $230.77 | $162.35 | 70.3% |
| $185,000 to $205,000 | $769.23 | $561.81 | 73.0% |
| $120,000 to $132,000 (MFJ) | $461.54 | $324.69 | 70.3% |
The gap between gross and net per paycheque is what a "3% raise" headline never shows: a biweekly paycheque only carries 70.3% to 73.0% of the raise an offer letter advertises, before any state tax comes out.
Where these numbers come from
Every rate and threshold on this page is published by the IRS or the Social Security Administration. Each was cross-checked against a second, independent source on August 8, 2026, because a wrong bracket on a calculator page is confidently wrong and a reader acts on it.
- IRS: 2026 tax inflation adjustments 2026 federal income tax brackets, single and married filing jointly
- Tax Foundation: 2026 tax brackets Independent republication used to cross-check the IRS thresholds above
- American Payroll Association: 2026 Social Security wage base $184,500 taxable maximum for 2026, reporting the SSA release directly (ssa.gov itself blocks automated fetches)
- The Tax Adviser: Social Security wage base and COLA for 2026 Second, independent report of the same $184,500 figure
- IRS Topic no. 560: Additional Medicare tax The 0.9% rate and the $200,000 single / $250,000 joint thresholds, not indexed since 2013
This is general publishing, not tax advice. It computes the statutory tax owed on the raise itself; your actual paycheque withholding depends on your W-4 elections and can differ. Your own pay stub and W-2 govern. State and local income tax are excluded entirely, not approximated, since they vary by state and several states have none. Re-check the bracket thresholds and the wage base every January, when both are re-indexed.
The next question after this one
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The pay raise calculator prices the gross dollar change with no tax modelled at all, and the hourly-to-salary calculator converts any of these figures back into an hourly rate for comparing offers.