About

What it does

TakeHome answers one question: what is actually left after taxes. Enter your gross pay, pick a filing status and a work state, and it returns take-home pay per paycheck and per year, a line-by-line breakdown of every withholding, and a side-by-side comparison of two states.

All fifty states and the District of Columbia are covered, each with its own standard deduction, personal exemption and brackets for tax year 2026. TakeHome is an independent tool — it is not affiliated with, endorsed by or operated by the IRS or any state tax agency.

How it works

The calculation runs in your browser. Your pay, filing status and deductions are never sent to a server: there is no account, no database and no storage of your figures. Reload the page and they are gone.

The full arithmetic is written out in the Method section of the calculator — four steps, in the order the IRS and the states apply them.

Where the numbers come from

• Federal brackets and standard deduction — IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, which sets the tax year 2026 figures.
• Social Security and Medicare — the 2026 contribution base published by the Social Security Administration.
• State rates and brackets — Tax Foundation’s 2026 state income tax tables, effective January 1, 2026.

Those three sources are linked directly from the Method section, and every figure in the calculator is transcribed from them rather than estimated.

What it leaves out

This is a withholding estimate, not a filing calculation. It does not model refundable credits such as the child tax credit or the EITC, bonuses and equity compensation, state disability insurance, retirement withdrawals, itemized deductions, AMT, phase-outs, capital gains, or the Form W-4 settings that change how an employer withholds.

Local and municipal income taxes — New York City, Philadelphia, and many Ohio and Maryland localities — are not applied on their own; you can enter a local rate manually. Head-of-household filers inherit the single-filer brackets at the state level.

The complete list lives in the Method section under Not modelled.

Who it is for

Employees who work remotely, or who are weighing a move and want the tax difference between two states before committing. It is also useful when reading a job offer, a relocation package, or a change in filing status.

It is not built for freelancers estimating quarterly payments, business returns, or anyone preparing to file.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or a figure that looks wrong: induk1@hotmail.com.

The Contact page explains what to include in a report, and the Disclaimer sets out what this tool is not.