Effective Tax Rate Calculator

Your effective tax rate is what you actually paid, expressed as one number. It is always lower than your headline bracket on the same tax — and often badly misleading if you stop at federal income tax and ignore payroll.

Gross income($)Income before taxes and deductions. Do not enter take-home pay.Federal income tax paid($)State and local income tax paid($)Employee payroll contributions($)The 7.65% Social Security and Medicare share shown on your pay stub.

Effective tax rate (all taxes included)

26.92%

Federal-only effective rate: 14.79%
Total tax paid: $25,844.00
Take-home pay: $70,156.00

Values update as you type. This calculator covers the single scenario its formula assumes — see Common Mistakes for what it leaves out.

The formula this calculator uses

Effective Tax Rate = Total Tax / Gross Income

Total Tax: Federal income tax plus state tax plus payroll contributions actually paid
Gross Income: Income before taxes, deductions and credits
Effective Rate: The blended share of income that went to tax
Marginal Rate: The rate applied to the next dollar earned, which is higher than the effective rate
Take-home: Gross income minus total tax

How to check the result by hand

1
Decide which taxes you are including
Federal income tax alone is the conventional answer and the one comparable to a marginal bracket. Adding state tax and payroll gives a truer picture of what actually left your pay. State both explicitly — neither is wrong, they answer different questions.
2
Take tax figures from the return, not from withholding
Use total tax liability from the filed return. Withholding is an estimate and a refund does not mean you paid less tax, only that you prepaid more.
3
Determine gross income before any deduction
Wages before retirement contributions and withholding, plus other taxable income. Dividing by take-home pay instead would raise this example from 26.92% to near 37%.
4
Divide and express as a percentage
$25,844 / $96,000 = 0.26921, so 26.92%. Compare with the federal-only result of $14,200 / $96,000 = 14.79%, and with the 22% marginal bracket the next dollar faces.
5
Compute take-home and monthly cash separately
$96,000 - $25,844 = $70,156 a year, or $5,846.33 a month. This is the figure budgeting actually depends on, and it is what every percentage above describes.

For worked examples, common mistakes and the limits of this formula, read the full How To Calculate Effective Tax Rate page.