Paycheck Increase Calculator
A 5 percent raise never means 5 percent more spending money. Federal tax, FICA and your retirement contribution take their cut first, and inflation takes another bite. This paycheck increase calculator shows what a raise is actually worth: your new salary, the after-tax increase per paycheck, how the raise splits, and whether it beats inflation, using the 2026 IRS tax brackets.
Paycheck Increase Calculator
Gross raise vs money in your pocket, per paycheck and after inflation.
FICA (Social Security plus Medicare) is applied at 7.65 percent on the raise. Very high earners hit the Social Security wage cap, where the rate drops; see the limits section below.
| Period | Before raise | After raise | Increase |
|---|
Estimates for planning. Your actual marginal rate depends on filing status, deductions and state taxes. FICA is 7.65 percent up to the Social Security wage base.
Quick Answer
A 5 percent raise on a $60,000 salary is $3,000 gross, but you keep about $2,231 of it: roughly $360 goes to federal tax at the 12 percent marginal bracket in 2026, $230 to FICA, and $180 to a 6 percent 401(k) contribution. That is $85.79 more per biweekly paycheck, and after 3 percent inflation the real raise is 1.9 percent.
Where your raise actually goes
Every dollar of raise passes through the same deductions as the rest of your pay. For the $60,000 example, the $3,000 gross raise splits four ways. First, the gross raise: $3,000, which is 5 percent of $60,000. This is the number on the letter, not in your account. Second, taxes: $590, made up of $360 federal at 12 percent marginal plus $230 FICA at 7.65 percent, taken before you see a cent. Third, retirement: $180, because a 6 percent contribution rises with pay. That money is good for retirement and invisible now. Fourth, take-home: $2,231, which is 74.4 percent of the raise, or $85.79 more per biweekly paycheck.
The split bar in the calculator shows the same four parts for any inputs you enter. Change the retirement percentage to zero and the whole retirement slice moves into take-home, which is the honest way to see what a contribution costs you now against what it buys later. Change the federal rate and you see how much of the difference between two filing situations is tax and how much is everything else.
The marginal-rate point everyone gets wrong
Moving into a higher tax bracket does not tax all your income at the higher rate. Only the dollars inside each bracket face that bracket’s rate, so a raise can never make you poorer after tax. What the raise does face is your marginal rate on every dollar: at $60,000 single in 2026, taxable income after the $16,100 standard deduction is $43,900, putting the whole raise in the 12 percent bracket.
The calculator estimates that marginal rate automatically from the 2026 single-filer brackets in IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32: 10 percent up to $12,400 of taxable income, 12 percent to $50,400, 22 percent to $105,700, 24 percent to $201,775, 32 percent to $256,225, 35 percent to $640,600, and 37 percent above that. If you file jointly, as head of household, or with itemised deductions, your marginal rate will differ, so edit the federal rate field to your own figure. The estimate is a starting point, and the editable field is what makes it usable for anyone who is not a single filer taking the standard deduction.
One more distinction matters. The marginal rate applies to the raise, but it is not your average rate. Your average rate across all income is lower, because the first slices of income are taxed at 10 and 12 percent. Anyone who divides total tax by total salary and applies that percentage to a raise will understate the tax on the raise, and overstate what lands in the paycheck.
Is your raise beating inflation?
A raise below inflation is a pay cut in disguise. The real raise is not the raise minus inflation, it is the ratio: one plus the raise divided by one plus inflation, minus one. With inflation near 3 percent, the math is unforgiving. A 3 percent raise on $60,000 gives a 0 percent real raise after 3 percent inflation: $1,800 gross, about $1,338 take-home, buying exactly what you bought last year. A 5 percent raise gives a 1.9 percent real raise: $3,000 gross, about $2,231 take-home, a genuine purchasing-power gain and a typical strong merit increase. An 8 percent raise gives a 4.9 percent real raise: $4,800 gross, about $3,569 take-home, which is promotion or job-change territory, though at higher pay you should watch for bracket creep as part of the raise crosses into the next bracket.
The badge in the calculator describes the sign of that real raise: above 1 percent it beats inflation, between minus 1 and 1 percent it roughly treads water, and below minus 1 percent it loses to inflation. Those bands describe the direction of purchasing power, not a rating of your employer or your performance, and the exact real percentage beside the badge is the number to quote.
Limits of the estimate
This is a federal-only estimate with two simplifications you should know. First, FICA is applied at a flat 7.65 percent on the whole raise. In reality Social Security tax stops at the annual wage base, so if your salary is already above that base, the 6.2 percent Social Security part does not apply to the raise and only the 1.45 percent Medicare part does. The tool overstates the FICA drag for very high earners, and the note under the calculator says so. Second, a percentage retirement contribution is pre-tax, which slightly reduces the federal tax on the raise. The tool counts the full retirement percentage as diverted from take-home and does not give that small federal saving back, so the keep figure is slightly conservative for pre-tax contributors. State income tax, local tax, health premiums and other payroll deductions are not included at all; a state paycheck tool is the right place for those, and this page does not pretend to be one.
To see what the extra money means for your budget, run the new salary through the salary raise calculator for a gross-only comparison, or check how a raise compounds over several years with the compound salary increase calculator. Those are different questions from this page’s question, which is what one raise is worth per paycheck after tax. For the opposite direction, converting an annual salary into a per-check amount without any raise, see the per-check salary calculator. And for a full state paycheck, including Pennsylvania’s own rules, see the Pennsylvania paycheck calculator.
What other raise calculators get wrong
Most raise calculators either ignore taxes entirely, showing you the fantasy $3,000, or apply a flat guessed tax rate with no basis. Almost none account for the retirement effect, even though percentage-based retirement contributions automatically absorb part of every raise. And few adjust for inflation, which is the only comparison that determines whether you are actually better off.
This calculator’s winning moves are the combination its competitors split apart: the federal rate tied to the real 2026 IRS brackets with an editable override, so non-single filers are not forced into a wrong number; FICA and the retirement drag shown as separate slices, so you can see which deduction is doing the damage; a before-and-after table across hourly, weekly, biweekly, monthly and annual periods, so the raise can be quoted in whatever period a negotiation uses; and the inflation-adjusted result with the exact real percentage, not just a verdict word. A competitor that shows only gross figures cannot be beaten on completeness by adding one more gross table; it is beaten by showing what lands in the paycheck, and that is what this tool does.
Frequently asked questions
Multiply the gross raise by one minus your marginal federal rate, minus 7.65 percent FICA, minus your retirement contribution percent. A $3,000 raise at a 12 percent marginal rate with 6 percent retirement leaves about $2,231, or 74 percent.
No. Brackets are marginal: only income inside the higher bracket is taxed at the higher rate. A raise always increases take-home pay; it just increases it by less than the gross amount.
Anything above inflation, recently near 3 percent. A 3 to 4 percent merit increase roughly holds purchasing power; 5 to 6 percent is a genuinely good raise; 8 percent or more usually means a promotion or job change.
Because federal tax, FICA, and often retirement contributions scale with the raise. A $3,000 raise is $115 per biweekly paycheck gross, but about $86 after the typical deductions.
Yes, if you contribute a percentage of pay. A 6 percent contribution on a $3,000 raise diverts $180 a year into retirement. It lowers your taxable income, which slightly reduces the federal bite.
Divide one plus the raise by one plus inflation, then subtract one. A 5 percent raise with 3 percent inflation is (1.05 divided by 1.03) minus 1, which is 1.9 percent real. If the raise equals inflation, the real raise is zero.
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References
IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32: 2026 federal income tax brackets and standard deduction ($16,100 single). Bureau of Labor Statistics and Federal Reserve inflation data for the near-3-percent inflation context used in examples. Social Security Administration wage base rules for the FICA cap note.