Minnesota paycheck calculator

What comes out of a paycheck, and in what order

Four things, and the order matters because each one is worked out on what the previous one left behind.

Pre-tax deductions come out first: a traditional 401(k), health premiums under a Section 125 plan, an HSA. These lower the income your federal tax is worked out on. A 401(k) contribution does not lower FICA; a Section 125 health premium usually does. This calculator has one pre-tax field, for retirement, and it treats that money exactly the way the rules do. It comes off before income tax and it is ignored entirely when Social Security and Medicare are worked out.

Federal income tax is withheld against the 2026 brackets, adjusted by whatever you put on your W-4. It is a prepayment, not a final bill, which is the only reason a refund exists.

FICA is 6.2% for Social Security and 1.45% for Medicare. Social Security stops once your wages for the year pass $184,500. Medicare never stops, and a further 0.9% applies above $200,000 for a single filer and $250,000 filing jointly. Your employer matches the first two and does not match the surcharge.

State and local tax varies enormously. Nine states take nothing from wages at all. Roughly a dozen apply one flat rate to everything above an allowance. The rest run graduated brackets of their own, and that is the case where this tool goes quiet rather than guessing.

The worked example, at the default inputs

The calculator opens on $2,500 of gross pay every two weeks, a single filer, no pre-tax retirement contribution and no state selected.

Twenty-six pay periods at $2,500 is $65,000 a year. The 2026 standard deduction for a single filer is $16,100, so $48,900 is taxable. That falls in two bands: 10% on the first $12,400 is $1,240, and 12% on the $36,500 above it is $4,380. Federal income tax for the year is $5,620, which is $216.15 a period.

FICA is charged on the whole $65,000, not on the taxable figure. Social Security at 6.2% is $4,030, and Medicare at 1.45% is $942.50, so $4,972.50 a year or $191.25 a period.

Total deductions are $10,592.50, leaving $54,407.50 for the year. That is about $2,092.60 every two weeks, before any state income tax.

Two numbers are worth holding onto from that. The marginal federal rate is 12%, because the last dollar landed in the second band. The effective federal rate is $5,620 divided by $65,000, which is 8.6%. Nobody in this example pays anything like 22%, even though 22% is the next band up.

Now choose a state. Colorado taxes at a flat 4.4% after a standard deduction we hold at $16,100, so the state bill is $2,151.60 a year and take-home falls to about $2,009.84 a period. Choose Illinois instead and the flat rate is 4.95%, but we hold no standard deduction figure for Illinois, so the tool applies the rate to the full $65,000: $3,217.50 a year, $123.75 a period. Choose Texas or Florida and the state line reads zero. The state pages carry the published figure for each one.

Why does your payslip differ from this figure?

Because this tool estimates the tax, and your employer computes withholding. Those are two different jobs done to two different rulebooks.

Withholding follows the W-4 you filed, using the methods in IRS Publication 15-T: the number of jobs in the household, dependents claimed, other income declared, deductions above the standard amount, and any extra dollar figure you asked for on line 4c. Two people on identical salaries in identical states can have very different withholding and still owe exactly the same tax at the end of the year.

Then there are the deductions this tool cannot see. Employer-sponsored health, dental and vision premiums. Life insurance above the excluded amount, which is taxable. Union dues. Garnishments. Commuter benefits. Local income tax, which exists in several hundred jurisdictions and is not in our data set at all: New York City, most of Ohio, much of Pennsylvania, and a scattering of counties elsewhere.

Treat the figure here as what the year should cost you, not as a prediction of a specific payslip. If you want to reconcile the two properly, compare year-to-date totals rather than a single period, because a mid-year change to benefits or a bonus period will distort any one cheque.

Why does the tool leave state tax blank in some states?

Because we publish a top marginal rate for graduated states, not the full bracket table, and a number built from a top rate alone would be wrong in the direction that hurts.

Consider what the alternative looks like. California's top rate is 13.3%. Applying that to $65,000 would produce a state bill of roughly $8,600, which is several times what a $65,000 earner actually pays there. New York's top rate is 10.9%, Oregon's is 9.9%, Hawaii's is 11%. In every one of those states the top rate belongs to income far above what most people earn, and using it as though it were a flat rate would overstate a bill by thousands of dollars.

So the calculator returns nothing for those states, labels the take-home line "before state tax", and prints the reason on screen. A flat state can be computed exactly from the two figures we hold, so it is. A state with no wage income tax returns a clean zero, so it does. A graduated state gets an explanation instead of a guess. The same policy governs every tool on the site and is described in our methodology.

What does a raise into a higher bracket actually cost?

Less than almost everyone expects, because only the dollars above the threshold move.

Take the worked example above and add $10,000 of salary. Taxable income goes from $48,900 to $58,900. The first $12,400 is still taxed at 10% and the band up to $50,400 is still taxed at 12%. Only the $8,500 that crosses into the third band is taxed at 22%, which costs $1,870. Federal tax rises from $5,620 to $7,670, so the extra $10,000 costs $2,050 in federal income tax and $765 in FICA, and about $7,185 of it lands in your pocket.

There is no bracket in the federal system where earning another dollar leaves you worse off. That can happen with means-tested benefits, subsidy cliffs and some state credits, but it does not happen with the brackets themselves. Our tax section works through the bands in more detail.

The mistakes that cost people the most

Budgeting from gross. An offer of $65,000 is roughly $54,400 before state tax and before benefits. Planning rent against the first figure is the most common and most expensive error on this page.

Treating a large refund as a win. A refund is a return of your own money after an interest-free loan to the Treasury. If it is large and predictable every year, the W-4 is the thing to change, not the celebration.

Forgetting the wage base restart. High earners see take-home rise late in the year when Social Security stops at $184,500, then fall again in January when it restarts. That is not a payroll error.

Assuming a 401(k) cuts every tax. It does not touch FICA. A dollar deferred still pays 7.65%.

Comparing offers on salary alone. A role in a no-income-tax state, or one with a 6% retirement match, can be worth more than a nominally higher salary elsewhere.

Auditing your own payslip

• Check the pay frequency on the payslip matches the one you selected here
• Confirm Social Security is 6.2% of gross and Medicare is 1.45% of gross
• Check whether your health premium is deducted before or after tax
• Compare year-to-date federal withholding against the annual figure this tool produces
• Look for a local or city tax line, which this calculator does not model
• Confirm your 401(k) percentage is applied to the pay definition you expected
• Re-run the IRS Tax Withholding Estimator after any raise, marriage or new job

If the gap is large after all of that, the W-4 is almost always the cause. Filing a new one takes minutes and takes effect on the next payroll run. More on the mechanics in our paycheck guides.

What this calculator does not include

The tool states this on screen, and it is worth repeating because the gaps matter more than the precision:

• Local and city income tax. Not in the data set, and it can reach several percent.
• Post-tax deductions. Union dues, garnishments, Roth 401(k) contributions and post-tax insurance all reduce take-home without reducing tax.
• Credits. The child tax credit and the earned income credit can move a real annual bill substantially and are settled at filing, not in withholding.
• Multiple jobs. Each employer withholds as though its wages were your only income, which routinely underwithholds a two-job household.
• The 0.9% surcharge in edge cases. The tool applies it to a single stream of wages, but it is assessed on combined household wages at filing.

Every dollar you shift into a traditional 401(k) or an HSA is a dollar the income tax does not see this year, up to $24,500 of elective deferral in 2026. That is the largest legitimate lever most employees have, and it is money you have decided to spend later rather than money you have saved. Our investing section covers where it should go once it is deferred.

Nothing here is tax advice or a filing figure. See the disclaimer.