Free Chicago Tax Calculator

Start with your gross salary and chip away at it. Federal income tax uses progressive brackets, so your first dollars are taxed less than your last. Then there's FICA (7.65% for Social Security and Medicare) and whatever your state takes — if you're lucky enough to live in a no-income-tax state, that part's zero. Pre-tax stuff like 401(k) contributions and HSA deposits lower your taxable income for federal and state purposes, but they don't touch FICA. Honestly, the easiest way is just to use a calculator — doing it by hand is a pain.

FICA is the payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. You pay 6.2% for Social Security (capped at $184,500 in earnings for 2026) and 1.45% for Medicare with no cap. So that's 7.65% total coming out of every paycheck. And if you earn over $200,000, there's an extra 0.9% Medicare surcharge on everything above that. Your employer matches what you pay, but that's their problem — you just see the 7.65% on your pay stub.

Roughly speaking, a single filer making $75K will lose about $7,670 to federal tax (after the $16,100 standard deduction), another $5,738 to FICA, and then it depends entirely on where you live. In Texas or Florida? Zero state tax, so you're keeping around $61,600. In Illinois? Subtract another $3,575 and you're closer to $58,000. The state you pick makes a real difference.

Yep, and it's pretty much the easiest tax win out there. Every dollar you put in a traditional 401(k) drops your taxable income by a dollar for federal and state tax purposes (though not for FICA). Toss in $10,000 on a $75K salary and you're only taxed on $65K — that could save you over $2,200 in federal tax alone if you're in the 22% bracket. The 2026 limit is $23,500 if you want to go hard.

Here's the thing — they sound similar but they're completely different. Your effective rate is your overall average: total tax divided by gross income. Your marginal rate is what hits your last dollar earned, meaning the top bracket you fall into. So someone making $75K has a marginal rate of 22%, but their effective federal rate is more like 11–12% because the first chunk of income gets taxed at way lower rates. People mix these up all the time and it leads to bad decisions.