Bonus Paycheck Calculator 2026

Enter your annual salary, your one-time bonus, your state and your filing status. The calculator works out your taxes for the year twice — once on your salary alone and once with the bonus added — and the tax on the bonus is the difference between the two:

• Estimated tax on the bonus = taxes for the year with the bonus − taxes for the year without it
• Estimated after-tax bonus = bonus − estimated tax on the bonus
• Estimated effective tax rate on this bonus = estimated tax on the bonus ÷ bonus

Both years use the same filing status, state, local tax and pre-tax deductions, so the only thing that changes is the bonus. Federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, Additional Medicare, state income tax, state payroll contributions and local income tax are each compared, and a line the bonus does not change is left out of the result. The bonus is added to the year once, so how often your salary is paid does not change the estimate.

A bonus is pay. IRS Publication 15 (2026) lists bonuses among supplemental wages — wage payments that are not regular wages — and a bonus is added to the rest of your income for the year. There is no separate bonus tax: the same federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare and, where your state has one, state income tax apply to it as to your salary.

Because the bonus sits on top of your salary, its federal income tax is worked out at the federal rates that apply to the top of your income. Only the part of your income that reaches a higher federal rate is taxed at that rate; a bonus does not move the rest of your salary to a higher rate.

What your employer takes out of a bonus paycheck is withholding: a prepayment toward your tax for the year, not the tax itself. Under IRS Publication 15 (2026), an employer that pays a bonus separately from regular wages can generally withhold federal income tax from it at a flat 22%, or add it to a regular paycheck and withhold on the total. The part of one employee’s supplemental wages above $1 million in a calendar year is withheld at 37%.

Your final tax is worked out on your return, on all your income for the year. If more was withheld from your pay than you owe, the difference can come back as part of a refund; if less was withheld, you can owe the difference. This calculator estimates the tax the bonus adds for the year, not the amount your employer will withhold from the bonus paycheck. State withholding on bonuses is not modeled.

A bonus paycheck often has a bigger share taken out than you expect. The reasons are about withholding, not a higher tax:

• A flat federal rate. Withholding at a flat 22% takes the same share of the bonus whatever your income, and that can be more or less than the federal income tax the bonus adds for you.
• More than federal income tax. Social Security and Medicare are taken from a bonus too, along with any state income tax and state payroll contributions, so the total share is larger than the federal rate alone.
• A bonus paid with regular wages. When a bonus is added to a regular paycheck without the amount of each being shown, Publication 15 (2026) has the employer withhold as if the total were a single payment for a regular payroll period — as though you were paid that much every pay period.

The tax the bonus adds for the year can be more or less than what was withheld. This calculator shows the estimate for the year, so you can set it beside what your bonus paycheck shows.

Yes. Publication 15 (2026) says supplemental wages are subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes whichever way the employer withholds income tax from them. In this calculator:

• Social Security applies to wages up to the year’s wage base. A bonus that takes your wages past it is taxed for Social Security only up to the wage base, and a bonus paid when your salary already reaches it adds no Social Security at all.
• Medicare has no wage base, so it applies to the whole bonus.
• Additional Medicare applies to wages above a threshold that depends on your filing status. If the bonus takes your wages past it, the part above the threshold is taxed at the extra rate.

The rates, wage base and thresholds come from the tax engine for the tax year shown, and the explanation under the result names the ones that apply to you.

In a state with an income tax, this calculator adds the bonus to the wages the state taxes, at the same state rates as your salary, and includes the state’s payroll contributions on wages — such as California’s State Disability Insurance — where it has them. If you choose a city or county with its own income tax, that is included too.

A state with no income tax adds no state income tax on the bonus. That does not make the bonus tax-free: federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare still apply to it, and so does any payroll contribution the state charges on wages.

States set their own rules for withholding on bonuses. Those rules are not modeled here: the estimate is the state tax the bonus adds for the year, not what will be withheld for the state from the bonus paycheck.

Take a single filer in Texas with a $75,000 salary and a $5,000 bonus. The year is worked out at $75,000, then again at $80,000:

The bonus adds $1,482.50 of estimated tax, which leaves an estimated after-tax bonus of $5,000 − $1,482.50 = $3,517.50 and an estimated effective tax rate of 29.6% on this bonus. All of this bonus falls within the same federal rate as the top of the salary, so its federal income tax is 22% of it. Texas has no state income tax, so the bonus adds none.

The same salary and bonus give a different answer elsewhere. In California, for the same single filer, the bonus also adds $420.41 of state income tax and $65.00 of CA State Disability Insurance, for $1,967.91 in all and an estimated after-tax bonus of $3,032.09. These figures are for this one example only: a different salary, bonus, state, filing status or deduction changes them, so use the calculator above for yours.

The gross bonus is the amount your employer awards, before any tax. The after-tax bonus is what is left once the taxes the bonus adds for the year are taken off. This calculator shows both, with each tax line between them, and the estimated effective tax rate on this bonus — the total tax on the bonus as a share of it.

The after-tax figure here is an estimate for the year. What reaches your bank account from the bonus paycheck depends on the withholding your employer uses and on anything else taken from that paycheck, such as a 401(k) contribution from the bonus, which this calculator does not model. To estimate a regular paycheck, use the US Paycheck Calculator, or the Hourly Paycheck Calculator for hourly pay.

• US Paycheck Calculator — estimate take-home pay from an annual salary after federal, state and payroll taxes.
• Hourly Paycheck Calculator — estimate take-home pay from an hourly wage, with overtime, after taxes.
• Overtime Pay Calculator — work out time-and-a-half and double-time pay before taxes.
• Pay Raise Calculator — work out a raise by percentage, amount or new salary, and estimate how much of it you keep.
• Pay Stub Calculator — estimate a regular paycheck line by line, from earnings to taxes, deductions and net pay.