Nj Pay Calculator
Your New Jersey paycheck loses money to four things before it reaches you: federal income tax, New Jersey income tax, Social Security and Medicare. This calculator estimates your take-home pay per paycheck using the 2026 federal brackets and standard deductions, New Jersey’s own two state tax tables, the 2026 Social Security wage base of $184,500, and a simplified child tax credit. This is the paycheck tool, not the NJ DMV 6-point ID document checker, which lives on its own page.
| Pay period | Gross | Take-home |
|---|
Planning estimate for the 2026 tax year. Federal tax uses the 2026 brackets and standard deductions ($16,100 single, $32,200 joint, $24,150 head of household) with a simplified $2,200 child tax credit per dependent. NJ tax uses the state’s own tables on income after NJ personal exemptions. Not included: NJ employee-side unemployment, disability (TDI) and family leave (FLI) contributions, pre-tax deductions such as 401(k) or health premiums, or the additional 0.9% Medicare tax on high earners.
Quick Answer
A single filer earning $70,350 and paid bi-weekly takes home $2,153.16 per paycheck: $2,705.77 gross minus $552.61 in deductions ($255.65 federal, $89.96 NJ, $167.76 Social Security, $39.23 Medicare), an effective rate of 20.4% and $55,982.14 a year. Enter the same inputs in the calculator above and you get these exact figures.
Key takeaways
- Four deductions come out of every NJ paycheck: federal income tax, NJ income tax, Social Security (6.2% to $184,500) and Medicare (1.45%). Federal tax is the largest piece at most incomes.
- New Jersey runs TWO state tax tables: Table A for single filers, Table B for joint and head-of-household filers. Tools that apply one table to everyone overcharge joint filers.
- The 2026 child tax credit is $2,200 per qualifying child, and New Jersey gives its own $1,000/$2,000 personal exemption plus $1,500 per dependent. Both are modeled here; most paycheck tools skip them.
- What is NOT in the estimate: NJ’s employee-side unemployment, disability and family-leave contributions, pre-tax 401(k) or health premiums, and the extra 0.9% Medicare tax above $200,000. Your real paycheck is slightly smaller than shown.
- Quick Answer
- How to use the NJ pay calculator
- How the math works: the 2026 figures behind the tool
- Worked example: $70,350 in New Jersey, checked line by line
- The New Jersey extras your paycheck feels but this estimate skips
- What competing calculators miss
- Frequently asked questions
- Add This Calculator to Your Website
- References
How to use the NJ pay calculator
Enter your salary, pick your pay rhythm and filing status, add dependents, and click Calculate. The results stay hidden until you calculate.
- Enter your annual salary: gross yearly pay before taxes or deductions. $70,350 is pre-filled as the worked example.
- Pick your pay period: weekly, bi-weekly, semi-monthly or monthly. Whichever you pick, the comparison table shows all four, so you can see the same salary at every rhythm.
- Choose your filing status: single, married filing jointly or head of household. This changes the federal brackets, the standard deduction and which New Jersey tax table applies, so the numbers move meaningfully.
- Add dependents: each one is counted as a qualifying child for a simplified $2,200 federal child tax credit and as a claimed dependent for New Jersey’s $1,500 exemption. Leave it at 0 if none.
- Read the breakdown: take-home per paycheck is the headline, with gross, total deductions, effective rate, annual net and an hourly equivalent beside it, then the four deduction lines itemized.
How the math works: the 2026 figures behind the tool
Every number below is the figure the calculator actually uses, and each one was checked against the IRS and SSA announcements for 2026.
Federal income tax applies to taxable income, which is your salary minus the 2026 standard deduction: $16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household. The 2026 brackets run 10% to 37%, and each rate touches only the slice of income inside its band. A $2,200 child tax credit per dependent then comes straight off the computed tax. Head of household gets its own bracket schedule here, which matters: at the same income it pays less than single, and tools that quietly apply joint brackets to it get the wrong answer.
New Jersey income tax works differently from the federal side in two ways. First, there is no standard deduction; instead the state gives personal exemptions of $1,000 ($2,000 joint) plus $1,500 per dependent, which come off before the brackets. Second, the state publishes two tables: Table A for single filers (1.4% up to $20,000, 1.75% to $35,000, 3.5% to $40,000, 5.525% to $75,000, 6.37% to $500,000, 8.97% to $1 million, 10.75% above) and Table B for joint and head-of-household filers, which stretches the middle bands (1.75% to $50,000, 2.45% to $70,000, 3.5% to $80,000, 5.525% to $150,000, then the same top three). Applying Table A to a joint filer overstates their NJ tax, which is exactly what the old version of this tool did.
FICA is the simple part: Social Security takes 6.2% of wages up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500 (a maximum of $11,439), and Medicare takes 1.45% of all wages with no cap. The additional 0.9% Medicare tax above $200,000 is not modeled, and neither are New Jersey’s employee-side unemployment, temporary disability and family leave contributions, which together cost typical workers a few hundred dollars a year. Pre-tax 401(k) contributions and health premiums are also outside the estimate, since they shrink taxable pay before any of this math runs.
Worked example: $70,350 in New Jersey, checked line by line
A single filer earning $70,350, paid bi-weekly, no dependents. Gross per paycheck is $70,350 ÷ 26 = $2,705.77. Federal taxable income is $70,350 − $16,100 = $54,250, and the 2026 single brackets give $5,800 on the first $50,400 plus 22% of the remaining $3,850, which is $6,647 a year or $255.65 per paycheck. New Jersey taxable income is $70,350 − $1,000 = $69,350, and Table A gives $89.96 per paycheck. Social Security is 6.2% of $70,350 ÷ 26 = $167.76, Medicare is 1.45% of gross = $39.23. Total deductions $552.61, take-home $2,153.16, effective rate 20.4%, annual net $55,982.14, hourly equivalent $70,350 ÷ 2,080 = $33.82/hr. Run these inputs in the calculator and every figure matches.
Where each $2,705.77 paycheck goes
The same salary at every pay rhythm, all computed live by the tool:
| Pay period | Gross | Take-home |
|---|---|---|
| Weekly | $1,352.88 | $1,076.58 |
| Bi-weekly | $2,705.77 | $2,153.16 |
| Semi-monthly | $2,931.25 | $2,332.59 |
| Monthly | $5,862.50 | $4,665.18 |
Filing status moves the numbers more than most people expect. At $120,000 married filing jointly with two dependents, bi-weekly take-home is $3,907.74 (15.3% effective), and at $85,000 as head of household with one dependent it is $2,767.94 (15.3%). Both reproduce exactly in the calculator. If you are comparing offers across states, a Texas paycheck estimate shows the no-income-tax contrast, and the hourly equivalent framing helps when one offer quotes salary and the other quotes an hourly rate.
The New Jersey extras your paycheck feels but this estimate skips
New Jersey hits employees with more than income tax, and honesty about the gap is what separates a planning estimate from a misleading one. On top of the state income tax, workers pay into unemployment insurance and the workforce fund, temporary disability insurance (TDI) and family leave insurance (FLI). Together they run a few hundred dollars a year at typical salaries, and both the TDI and FLI rates dropped for 2026, so workers keep slightly more than last year. This calculator does not include those three, so your real paycheck is slightly smaller than shown. What New Jersey does not have is a local wage tax: unlike Pennsylvania, there is no city or county income tax layered on top. And if you live in NJ but work in New York City, you can generally claim a credit on your NJ return for income tax paid to New York, which softens the double hit. For a full national picture of what take-home means, the take-home pay walkthrough covers the same concepts without the state layer.
What competing calculators miss
Paycheck tools split into three camps, and each leaves something on the table:
- Withholding calculators (PaycheckCity and the payroll-provider style): the closest to an actual pay stub, with W-4 inputs and NJ’s FLI/SDI lines. The price is complexity: a multi-section W-4 workflow for a question most people want answered in ten seconds.
- Annual-tax estimators (WorldSalaries and similar): clean 2026 line items and they model NJ’s UI/TDI/FLI, which this page honestly does not. Their gaps are ours to fill: no dependent or tax-credit inputs at all, joint filing assumes a spouse with no income, and no hourly equivalent.
- Thin state pages: a salary table and a “calculate” button, sometimes with stale bracket tables. One popular NJ page’s bracket table skips the 8.97% band entirely, jumping from 6.37% straight to 10.75%.
- The gap this page fills: 2026 IRS and SSA figures verified line by line (the federal bracket math here reproduces two independent competitors’ published examples to the cent), New Jersey’s two state tables applied by filing status instead of one table for everyone, the $2,200 child credit and NJ personal exemptions modeled, an hourly equivalent for offer comparisons, and all four pay rhythms in one view, with the exclusions stated up front instead of discovered on the pay stub.
Frequently asked questions
Expect roughly 20 to 25% at middle incomes. For the $70,350 worked example the effective rate is 20.4%: federal income tax is the largest piece at $255.65 per bi-weekly paycheck, then Social Security at $167.76, NJ income tax at $89.96 and Medicare at $39.23. The calculator above shows your exact split.
No. New Jersey has no city or county wage tax like Pennsylvania’s. You pay state income tax plus the employee-side unemployment, disability and family leave contributions, which this estimate does not include.
New Jersey uses graduated brackets from 1.4% to 10.75%, with the top rate applying only above $1 million. Single filers use Table A and joint and head-of-household filers use Table B, which stretches the middle bands. Most earners fall in the 1.4% to 6.37% portion of the schedule.
Yes. The tool computes Social Security at 6.2% up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500 and Medicare at 1.45% of gross pay with no cap, shown as separate lines in the breakdown. The additional 0.9% Medicare tax above $200,000 is not included.
Common reasons: pre-tax 401(k) or health premiums lower your taxable pay, New Jersey’s unemployment, disability and family-leave deductions are not in this estimate, and your employer withholds based on your W-4, which can differ slightly from the annualized formula. Treat the result as a planning estimate, not a payroll figure.
Annual salary divided by 2,080 hours (40 hours times 52 weeks). For $70,350 that is $33.82 per hour. It is a comparison figure for weighing job offers, not a statement about overtime or actual hours worked.
Each dependent is counted as a qualifying child for a simplified $2,200 federal child tax credit and as a claimed dependent for New Jersey’s $1,500 exemption. The real rules are finer: only children under 17 qualify for the $2,200 credit, other dependents get a $500 credit, and the credit phases out above $200,000 of income ($400,000 joint).
The wage base is the annual earnings cap for Social Security tax: $184,500 for 2026, up from $176,100 in 2025. You pay 6.2% on wages up to that amount (at most $11,439) and nothing beyond it, so very high earners see their Social Security line stop growing while Medicare keeps going.
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References
- Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Procedure 2025-32: 2026 inflation adjustments (brackets, standard deductions) (PDF). Accessed October 23, 2026.
- New Jersey Division of Taxation. New Jersey Gross Income Tax tables and rate schedules. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- LifeCalc. 2026 Tax Brackets and Standard Deduction: full 2026 federal bracket tables and the $16,100/$32,200/$24,150 standard deductions. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- InvestorMint. 2026 Tax Brackets vs. Marginal Rates: 2026 brackets for single, joint and head-of-household filers with standard deduction figures. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- TaxAct. 2026 Tax Changes: What to Know Before You File: 2026 federal bracket tables by filing status. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- IncomeTaxPro. Federal Income Tax Calculator and Rates for 2026-2027: 2026 federal brackets sourced to IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- Journal of Accountancy. Social Security wage base and COLA announced for 2026: the $184,500 wage base and 6.2%/1.45% rates per the SSA announcement. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- The Tax Adviser. Social Security wage base and COLA announced for 2026: $184,500 wage base, unchanged Medicare rate and the additional 0.9% Medicare tax thresholds. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- BrightTax. What is the Child Tax Credit?: the 2026 maximum of $2,200 per qualifying child with up to $1,700 refundable. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- First Citizens Bank. Tax breaks for parents: 2026 deductions and credits: the $2,200 child tax credit, the $500 credit for other dependents and phase-out thresholds. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- IncomeTaxPro. 2026 New Jersey Income Tax Calculator, Rates, and Brackets: Table A and Table B with the 2.45% band, sourced to the NJ Division of Taxation. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- LegalClarity. Does NJ Have State Income Tax? Rates and Brackets: NJ bracket tables by filing status and the $1,000/$1,500 personal exemptions. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- GTA Accounting Group. New Jersey Tax Calculator: Estimate Your Income Taxes in 2026: 2026 NJ brackets and the 2026 TDI/FLI rate reductions. Accessed October 23, 2026.
- TurboTax (Intuit). New Jersey State Income Tax Guide: NJ tax tables, filing thresholds and residency rules. Accessed October 23, 2026.