Tax Bracket & Effective Tax Rate Calculator

Marginal vs effective rate in one sentence each

Your marginal rate is the percentage taken from the next dollar you earn; it is the rate of the highest bracket your taxable income reaches. Your effective rate is your total tax divided by your income, and because every lower bracket is taxed at a lower rate, it is always below the marginal rate.

Use the marginal rate for decisions about extra income or deductions — a raise, overtime, a 401(k) contribution. Use the effective rate to understand your overall tax burden or compare it with someone else’s.

A $100,000 salary, bracket by bracket

A single filer earning $100,000 subtracts the $16,100 standard deduction, leaving $83,900 of taxable income. It is taxed like this: 10% on $12,400 of taxable income ($0 to $12,400) = $1,240; 12% on $38,000 of taxable income ($12,400 to $50,400) = $4,560; 22% on $33,500 of taxable income ($50,400 to $83,900) = $7,370.

Total federal income tax is $13,170. That is 13.2% of gross income and 15.7% of taxable income, while the marginal rate is 22%. Adding Social Security and Medicare ($7,650) brings the total federal effective rate to 20.8%.

2026 effective and marginal rates by income

Federal income tax only, standard deduction, no credits. The "with FICA" column adds employee Social Security and Medicare on wages.

When your real marginal rate is higher than your bracket

The bracket rate is not the whole story. Several features of the tax code withdraw benefits as income rises, which works like an extra tax on each additional dollar in that range.

• Child tax credit: it falls by $50 per $1,000 above $200,000 ($400,000 joint), adding about 5 percentage points to the marginal rate until it is gone.
• Senior deduction: the $6,000 deduction for people 65 and older shrinks by 6% of income above $75,000 ($150,000 joint), so in that band each extra dollar also raises taxable income by 6 cents.
• Earned income tax credit: lower-income workers lose part of the credit for each dollar earned above the phase-out start, which can make their effective marginal rate higher than a middle-income worker’s.
• Additional Medicare Tax and NIIT: wages above $200,000 pay an extra 0.9%, and investment income above the same threshold can pay 3.8%.
• State income tax: add your state’s marginal rate to the federal one. Social Security’s 6.2% stops at the wage base, which is why the marginal rate on wages can fall slightly for very high earners.

The "raise into a higher bracket" myth

Moving into a higher bracket never reduces your take-home pay from wages, because the higher rate applies only to income above the threshold. A single filer whose taxable income rises from $49,400 to $51,400 pays 12% on the first $1,000 of the increase and 22% on the second; every other dollar is taxed exactly as before.

Using your marginal rate for real decisions

The marginal rate is the one that prices your choices. For a single filer earning $100,000 (the 22% bracket):

• Putting $5,000 into a traditional 401(k) lowers federal income tax by $1,100 — 22% of the contribution — because every dollar comes off the top bracket.
• An extra $2,000 of wages adds $440 of federal income tax plus $153 of Social Security and Medicare. The same $2,000 as freelance profit would also carry roughly 15.3% self-employment tax on 92.35% of it instead of 7.65%.
• A $1,000 deduction is worth $1,000 × your marginal rate, but only if you itemize or it is one of the deductions available to everyone. A $1,000 credit is worth $1,000 at any bracket.