Income Tax Calculator

How to estimate income tax at a flat rate

Enter your taxable income and a single tax rate. The tool multiplies them and subtracts to show what you would keep. It is a flat-rate estimator, which means the quality of the answer rests entirely on the rate you choose.

The rate to use is your effective rate, total tax divided by taxable income, not the bracket you fall in. In a progressive system those two numbers are always different, and the bracket is always the larger of them.

• Enter your taxable income, after deductions, in the Taxable income field. It starts at 60000.
• Enter your effective rate in the Tax rate (%) field. It starts at 22.
• Read the Estimated tax line and the After-tax income line.
• Do not read the Effective rate line as a computed result. It repeats the rate you entered.
• For an all-in figure, combine federal, state, and payroll rates into a single percentage before entering it.

A generic-rate estimator, not a tax return

It is worth being blunt about what this page is. It performs one multiplication: income times rate. It holds no bracket tables for any country or year, no standard deduction, no credits, no filing status, no state or provincial tax, and no payroll or self-employment tax. It cannot look up your jurisdiction, because it has no concept of jurisdictions.

That is a genuine feature for a back-of-envelope figure, since nothing here can go stale when a bracket threshold moves, and it works identically for a US filer, a UK taxpayer, and a freelancer anywhere else. It is also the reason the output will never match a filed return, and why it should not be used to decide anything binding.

The one input that carries all the accuracy is the rate. Feed the tool your effective rate, which is total tax divided by taxable income, and the answer will be close. Feed it your top bracket and it will overstate the bill, in some cases by thousands.

• No brackets, no progressive bands, one flat rate only.
• No deductions, credits, allowances, or filing status.
• No state, local, payroll, Social Security, Medicare, or self-employment tax unless you fold them into the rate.
• No tax year selection, because there are no tax tables to select from.

Effective rate against marginal rate

In a progressive system your income is taxed in slices. Only the last slice is charged at your headline bracket, and the earlier slices were charged at lower rates. The marginal rate is what the next dollar costs. The effective rate is total tax divided by total taxable income, and it is always the smaller of the two.

The gap is large enough to matter. A US single filer with 60000 of taxable income sits in the 22 percent bracket but pays an effective federal rate closer to 13.5 percent. Enter 22 and the tool reports 13200 of tax; enter 13.5 and it reports 8100. The difference is 5100 on a single return, and the second figure is the honest one.

A practical way to find your own rate is to divide last year total tax by last year taxable income and use that percentage, adjusted for anything you know has changed. If what you actually want is an estimate of a single paycheck rather than a year, the Paycheck Calculator takes gross pay, a withholding percentage, and deductions instead.

• Marginal rate: what the next dollar of income is taxed at.
• Effective rate: total tax divided by taxable income, always lower.
• Enter the effective rate, or the tool overstates the bill.
• Income here means taxable income, after deductions, not gross salary.