Methodology

Accuracy is the product. If a figure cannot be traced to an official source, it does not ship — and where something is approximate, it is listed below rather than buried.

Federal income tax

Brackets and the standard deduction come from IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32 (2026 inflation adjustments). Tax is computed on taxable income — gross pay minus the standard deduction for your filing status — by applying each bracket rate to the slice of income that falls inside it. All four filing statuses have their own bracket table.

Social Security and Medicare

• Social Security: 6.2% on wages up to $184,500 for 2026, a maximum of $11,439. Source: SSA 2026 contribution and benefit base announcement.
• Medicare: 1.45% on every dollar. There is no wage base.
• Additional Medicare: a further 0.9% above $200,000 for single filers, $250,000 married filing jointly, $125,000 married filing separately. These thresholds are fixed in statute and have never been indexed for inflation, so they catch more earners every year.

Only the employee share is shown. Your employer pays a matching amount that never appears on your payslip.

State income tax

All 50 states and DC are covered. Nine levy no tax on wages. For the rest we apply the state’s own brackets to income after its own standard deduction and personal exemption — and critically, we track which kind of exemption each state uses. Some reduce taxable income; others are a flat credit against tax owed. Treating one as the other produces a wrong answer of a few hundred dollars, so each state declares its own mechanism explicitly.

Wage data

Median wages come from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 state estimates (bulk file), May 2025 estimates. Where the BLS suppresses a figure, or withholds it because the median exceeds $115,000, that combination is omitted entirely. We do not estimate a number the source declined to publish.

Liability, not withholding

Every figure here is annual tax liability — what you owe for the year. Employer withholding, which is what appears on a paycheck, is calculated differently under IRS Publication 15-T and depends on your W-4. The two normally land close but rarely match exactly. A withholding mode is planned.

Source verification, state by state

Our standard is that every figure traces to the revenue department that publishes it. That check is being worked through jurisdiction by jurisdiction, and this table is the live status rather than a claim — including the states where it is not done yet.

39 checked against the state’s own revenue department · 9 levy no wage tax so there is nothing to check · 3 where a primary source was found but the figures do not yet reconcile · 0 still rely on a secondary compilation.

Errors found and corrected by this process

• Arizona: Standard deduction was $8,350 / $16,700 — roughly half the real figure. Arizona couples to the federal standard deduction; AZDOR publishes $15,750 / $31,500 / $23,625 for 2025, which are the federal amounts. Now set to the federal 2026 amounts of $16,100 / $32,200 / $24,150.
• California: Standard deduction was $5,540/$11,080 — the 2024 figure. Corrected to $5,706/$11,412.
• Georgia: Flat rate was 5.19%; corrected to 4.99%.
• Georgia: Standard deduction was $12,000 / $24,000; corrected to $15,000 / $30,000.
• Hawaii: Standard deduction was $4,400 / $8,800 — the 2024–25 amounts. Act 46 raises it for tax year 2026 to $8,000 single, $16,000 joint, $12,000 head of household. Corrected.
• Idaho: A 0% band to $4,811 was being applied before the 5.3% rate, left over from Idaho’s pre-flat structure. The Commission states the rate is 5.3% on Idaho taxable income with no such band; removed. This had been understating Idaho tax by about $255 for every filer.
• Maine: Bracket boundaries were $27,399 / $64,849 single and $54,849 / $129,749 joint — the compiled source’s "over $X" phrasing. Maine publishes them as $27,400 / $64,850 and $54,850 / $129,750. Aligned.
• Massachusetts: 4% surtax threshold was $1,083,150 — the 2025 certification. Corrected to $1,107,750 for 2026.
• Minnesota: Head-of-household standard deduction was falling back to the single figure of $15,300; the Department publishes $23,000. Corrected.
• New Jersey: Fourth band rate was 5.53%; the statute is 5.525%. Corrected.
• New Mexico: Head of household was being given the SINGLE bracket schedule. FYI-104 Table 7 column (c) puts head of household on the same schedule as married filing jointly. This overstated New Mexico tax for those filers by about $200 a year at $75,000, before the standard-deduction correction below compounded it.
• Oklahoma: Bracket structure was four bands with a zero-rate floor at $3,750. HB 2764 consolidated six brackets into three from tax year 2026: 0.25% to $1,000, 2.75% to $7,200, 4.5% above (doubled for joint).
• Oklahoma: Top rate was already 4.5% and remains so, down from 4.75% in 2025.
• Oregon: Personal exemption credit was $256 — the 2025 figure. The 2026 formula uses $263. Corrected.
• Rhode Island: Head-of-household standard deduction was falling back to the single figure of $11,200; the Division publishes $16,800. Corrected.
• South Carolina: Entire schedule replaced. Was 0% / 3% / 6% at $3,640 / $18,230; H.4216 sets 1.99% under $30,000 and 5.21% above for tax year 2026.
• South Carolina: Standard deduction was $8,350 / $16,700; replaced by the SCIAD at $15,000 single, $22,500 head of household, $30,000 joint.
• Vermont: Single and joint bands were Vermont’s 2025 schedule exactly ($49,400 / $119,700 / $249,700 and $82,500 / $199,450 / $304,000) — one full year stale, not indexed as previously assumed. Updated to the 2026 figures.
• Vermont: Married filing separately was falling back to the single schedule. Vermont publishes Schedule Y-2 at exactly half of Y-1, which is a very different set of numbers.
• Vermont: Head of household was also falling back to single. Vermont’s Schedule Z is far wider — its first boundary is $15,450 higher — so this overstated tax for those filers substantially.
• Vermont: Personal exemption was $5,300, the 2025 amount. GB-1210 puts the 2026 withholding allowance at $5,400, and the 2025 allowance was exactly the 2025 exemption.
• West Virginia: Every rate was one year stale. Was 2.22 / 2.96 / 3.33 / 4.44 / 4.82; corrected to 2.11 / 2.81 / 3.16 / 4.22 / 4.58 per the 5% cut under WV Code 11-21-4j, retroactive to 1 January 2026.
• Arkansas: Top rate was 3.9%; Acts 1 and 2 signed 6 May 2026 cut it to 3.7% retroactive to 1 January 2026.
• Arkansas: Bracket structure was a single $4,600 boundary; replaced with the published bands at $5,599 / $11,199 / $15,999 / $26,399.

A correction found here is the point of the exercise, not an embarrassment. Every one is also recorded in the changelog with a date.

How these figures are kept current

Tax law moves constantly, and the first full verification pass showed how. Of the jurisdictions we could check against a primary source, roughly one in three held a wrong figure — and the commonest cause was not a transcription slip but a legislature changing the tax after the data was compiled. South Carolina replaced its entire income tax in March, Arkansas and Georgia cut rates in May, West Virginia in June, all retroactive to 1 January.

Two rules came out of that, and both are now the working method. First, re-reading a state’s rate page is not enough — those pages go stale, and one state still described a rate it had already cut months earlier. Second, the best source is the state’s own withholding formula: a state must publish it before 1 January so employers can run payroll, so it is always current, always official, and usually carries the rate, the deduction and the exemption in one document.

Scheduled changes we already know are coming

Anything on this list is a change that will happen on its own — several states now cut rates automatically when revenue targets are met, with no bill to watch for. Finding one of these unchanged is itself a finding.

What this does not model

• Local income taxes — New York City, Yonkers, Maryland counties, and municipalities in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Missouri. Take-home in those places is lower than shown.
• Pre-tax deductions: 401(k), HSA, FSA, employer health premiums.
• Dependents, itemised deductions, and credits beyond the personal exemption.
• Non-wage income, self-employment tax, and reciprocity agreements between states.

States with known approximations

These are listed on each state page too. Head-of-household figures use the single-filer table in every state, because the compiled source publishes single and married-jointly only — which makes those figures conservative, never understated.

• Alabama — head_of_household; standard deduction phases out with income
• Arkansas — head_of_household uses the single table; Arkansas switches to a different bracket table above $94,700 of net taxable income; this engine applies the standard table throughout, understating tax for those filers by about $287
• California — head_of_household — California publishes a distinct HoH table (Schedule Z); single is used as a conservative stand-in; figures are California’s latest published (2025) schedule; CA indexes for inflation each August and had not released 2026 amounts when checked
• Connecticut — head_of_household; exemption phase-out and benefit recapture not modelled
• Delaware — head_of_household
• District of Columbia — head_of_household
• Hawaii — head_of_household brackets still use the single table; only the standard deduction is HoH-specific; the deduction rises again in 2028, 2030 and 2031 and the brackets in 2027 and 2029 — re-check each January
• Indiana — county income taxes not included — Phase 2
• Kansas — head_of_household
• Maine — head_of_household
• Maryland — head_of_household; county income tax (2.25%–3.20%) NOT included — Phase 2; Maryland take-home is materially overstated without it; standard deduction is 15% of AGI within a floor/cap, modelled at the cap
• Michigan — city income taxes (Detroit and others) not included — Phase 2
• Minnesota — head_of_household brackets still use the single table; only the standard deduction is HoH-specific
• Missouri — Kansas City and St. Louis 1% earnings taxes not included — Phase 2

Every figure was verified on 2026-08-09. Rates are re-audited quarterly and changes are recorded in the changelog.