Take-home pay
Turn a gross salary into what actually reaches your account, with every rate used shown on the page.
Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you enter is uploaded.
How this works
Where the money goes before you see it
Gross salary is a headline. Between it and your bank account sit three separate deductions that work in different ways, and confusing them is what makes payslips hard to read.
- Social insurance is usually a flat percentage, often with a ceiling above which no further contribution is taken. It is charged on your earnings, not on your taxable income, so deductions do not reduce it.
- Income tax is progressive. It applies to taxable income — gross minus the deductions the system allows — and each slice of that income is taxed at the rate of the band it falls into.
- Local tax is typically a flat rate applied to a taxable base that may be calculated slightly differently from the national one.
The bar above the breakdown shows all three against what you keep, at the same scale. For most salaries the surprise is how large the social insurance block is relative to income tax.
How progressive brackets actually work
A bracket is not a category your whole salary falls into. It is a slice. If the first band is 10% up to 11,925 and the next is 12%, then someone with 20,000 of taxable income pays 10% on the first 11,925 and 12% only on the 8,075 above it — never 12% on the whole amount.
This is why the effective rate is always lower than the top bracket you touch. Someone in the 22% band typically pays an effective income tax rate closer to 12–14%. Both numbers are shown above, and they answer different questions: the effective rate tells you what this year cost, the marginal rate tells you what next year's raise is worth.
The ceiling effect
Social insurance ceilings produce a result that looks wrong until you understand it: the marginal rate can fall as income rises. In the US system, once earnings pass the social security wage base, that 6.2% stops applying to additional income. Someone earning 200,000 keeps more of their next dollar than someone earning 150,000, despite being in a higher income tax bracket.
Rather than hard-code that rule, this calculator finds the marginal rate by recomputing your net pay at a slightly higher salary and measuring the difference. That approach is exact for any system, including ones like Japan's where a higher gross does not translate into an equally higher taxable income because the employment income deduction absorbs part of the increase.
What is not included
Every calculator of this kind draws a boundary somewhere. This one draws it at the national level plus one local rate, and states exactly what it used in the assumptions panel. Not included:
- State, provincial, or municipal taxes beyond the single local rate shown
- Pension or retirement contributions you choose to make
- Employer-provided health premiums deducted at source
- Tax credits, dependants, and itemised deductions
- Bonuses taxed at a different withholding rate
Any of these can move your real take-home by several percent. The point of showing every rate used is so you can see precisely which assumption to correct, rather than being handed a number with no working attached.
Using this sensibly
This is a planning estimate, not a tax return. It is well suited to comparing two job offers, seeing what a raise is really worth after the marginal rate, or sanity-checking a payslip you find confusing. It is not suited to filing anything, and it has no knowledge of your personal circumstances. For that, use your country's official calculator or an accountant.
Common questions
- Why is my actual payslip different?
- Almost always because of something this calculator cannot know: state or city tax, a pension contribution, health premiums, a different filing status, or credits you claim. The figure here is a baseline built from the standard deduction and the published brackets. Treat a gap of a few percent as normal and a large gap as a sign that something specific to you is missing.
- What is the difference between the effective and marginal rate?
- The effective rate is what you pay overall — total deductions divided by gross. The marginal rate is what happens to your next unit of income. The marginal rate is nearly always the higher of the two, and it is the one that tells you what a raise is worth.
- Why can the marginal rate go down as I earn more?
- Because social insurance contributions often stop at a ceiling. In the US system, social security tax ends above roughly 176,100, so a salary above that keeps more of each additional dollar than a salary just below it, even though the income tax bracket is higher. This calculator measures the marginal rate by actually recomputing net pay, so it captures that reversal rather than assuming it away.
- Are the tax rates current?
- The year the rates come from is stated on the page and in the assumptions panel. Brackets are adjusted annually, so check the year shown against the current one. If it has fallen behind, the result will be slightly out.
- Does moving into a higher bracket cost me money?
- No, and this is the most persistent myth in personal tax. Only the income above the threshold is taxed at the higher rate. Earning one more unit never leaves you with less than before — except where a benefit or credit phases out, which is a separate mechanism from the brackets themselves.