🪙 Take-Home Pay Calculator
Estimate net pay from gross salary, tax rate, and other deductions.
About this tool
Estimates take-home (net) pay from a gross annual salary by applying a single effective tax rate and subtracting any other yearly deductions you enter, such as retirement contributions or insurance premiums.
This is a simplified planning estimate, not a payroll calculation — real tax systems use progressive brackets, credits, and jurisdiction-specific rules this tool doesn't model.
Worked example
A $60,000 gross salary with a 22% effective tax rate and $3,000 in other deductions comes out to about $43,800 take-home per year, or $3,650 per month.
How to use it
- Enter your gross annual salary.
- Enter your effective (overall) tax rate — not your top marginal bracket.
- Enter any other yearly deductions, like retirement or insurance.
- Press Calculate.
Tips
- Your effective tax rate is your total tax divided by total income — usually lower than your marginal (top bracket) rate. Check a recent payslip or tax return for a realistic figure.
- This tool doesn't distinguish pre-tax and post-tax deductions — for a more accurate picture, subtract pre-tax deductions from gross income before entering it here.
- Use this for rough budgeting and offer comparisons, not for filing taxes or precise payroll figures.
FAQ
Why does this ask for an effective tax rate instead of calculating brackets automatically?
Tax brackets, credits, and rules vary enormously by country and even by state or region — asking for a single effective rate keeps this tool universally usable instead of being accurate for only one jurisdiction.
Where do I find my effective tax rate?
Divide the total tax you paid last year by your total gross income — most tax software and pay stubs show this, or you can estimate it from a recent return.
Does this include Social Security, Medicare, or similar payroll taxes?
Only if you fold them into either the tax rate or the "other deductions" field — this tool treats all reductions from gross to net generically rather than itemizing specific payroll taxes.
From the blog: getting the most out of this tool
We deliberately kept this simple rather than trying to model every country's tax bracket system, which would require constant updates and still get corner cases wrong — a single effective-rate estimate is honest about being an estimate, which we think is more useful than false precision.
It pairs naturally with the Hourly-to-Salary Calculator and the Budget Calculator if you're mapping out a full picture from job offer to monthly spending plan.
📖 Want the fuller explanation?
See The 50/30/20 Budget Rule for the reasoning behind this calculation, with worked examples.