Unexpectedly Intriguing!
02 January 2023

Welcome to 2023! Since you've clicked through to this tool, we know you're here to estimate what your take home pay will look like after all those federal income and payroll taxes have been taken out of your paycheck. But first, since it's now in the public domain, here's what 1927 vintage cartoon characters Mutt and Jeff discovered to be the secret of success while working as income tax "experts".

Mutt and Jeff: As Income Tax Experts They Discover the Secret of Success, Douglas Daily Dispatch, 11 March 1927, via Library of Congress

Who knew?! But as anyone who has earned an income without offsetting losses and has paid income taxes knows, what Uncle Sam takes out of your paycheck can be pretty substantial.

How substantial can be affected by several factors. For instance, how much did you invest toward your retirement in a pre-tax 401(k) retirement account at work? Does your employer offer health or dependent care pre-tax flexible spending accounts that you might use this year? Did you get a raise to cope with President Biden's inflation?

Our 2023 paycheck tool can help you find out how the answers to these questions can affect your paycheck and more! If you're reading this article on a site that republishes our RSS news feed, please click through to our site to access a working version of the tool. Otherwise, you're more than welcome to enter whatever numbers you want to consider for what your paychecks might look like in 2023. It all starts... now!

Your Paycheck and Tax Withholding Data
Category Input Data Values
Basic Pay Data Current Annual Pay
Pay Period
Federal Withholding Data Filing Status
Have you filed a new IRS Form W-4 with your employer since 2019?
Number of Withholding Allowances (from your pre-2020 IRS Form W-4 if you haven't)
Extra Tax to Withhold per Paycheck (as requested on your IRS Form W-4)
401(k) or 403(b) Contributions Pre-Tax Contributions (%)
After Tax Contributions (%)
Flexible Spending Account Annual Contribution Data Health Care Spending Account
Dependent Care Spending Account
What if You Had a Raise? Desired Raise (%)

Your "Typical" Paycheck Data
Category Calculated Results Values
Basic Income Data Proposed Annual Salary (Including Raise!)
Typical Paycheck Amount
Federal Tax Withholding Amounts U.S. Federal Income Taxes
U.S. Social Security Taxes
U.S. Medicare Taxes
U.S. Additional "Medicare" Taxes (If Applicable)
401(k) or 403(b) Contributions Pre-Tax Contributions
After-Tax Contributions
Total Contributions
Flexible Spending Account Contributions Health Care Spending Account
Dependent Care Spending Account
Your Paycheck's Bottom Line
Take Home Pay Estimate Basic Net Paycheck Amount
... But, After Social Security's Taxable Income Cap Is Reached, It Becomes (If Applicable, for a Full Paycheck)
... And Then, After Additional Medicare Tax Income Threshold Is Reached, It Becomes (If Applicable, for a Full Paycheck)

The tool's results convey how much money the IRS withholds for federal taxes from each of your paychecks in 2023. There are however a number of factors that will complicate your withholding tax results based upon how much you cumulatively earn during the year.

For example, once your cumulative income reaches $160,200 or higher, you will no longer have Social Security's payroll tax of 6.2% of your income deducted from your paycheck (if you're self-employed, that payroll tax is 12.4%). The tool above is designed to provide withholding tax estimates for the majority of Americans who are employed by others. People making this amount of money don't really get a break however, because they've already been pushed into a higher tax bracket, paying higher regular income tax rates than those paid by over half of all income-earning American households.

There's also the complication provided by the so-called "Additional Medicare Tax" that your employer is required to begin withholding from your paycheck if, and as soon as, your year-to-date income rises above the $200,000 mark. This surtax of 0.9% of gross income was imposed by the "Affordable Care Act" (a.k.a. "Obamacare") in 2010, which is still in effect. Since the money collected through this surtax does not directly support the Medicare program, unlike the real Medicare payroll taxes paid by you and your employer, it is really best thought of as an additional income tax. That additional income tax is not adjusted for inflation, which means that those who must pay it are subject to 1970s-style income tax bracket creep, even though the tax was sold on the claim that it would be limited to only very high income earners.

In the tool above, when the amount of your annual 401(k) or 403(b) retirement savings contributions exceed the annual limits set by law, we've limited the results our tool provides to be those consistent with their statutory limits, and will do so as if you specifically set the percentage contributions for these contributions with that in mind. Our tool does not consider whether you might take advantage of the "catch-up" provisions in the law that are available to individuals Age 50 or older, which increase those annual contribution limits by as much as $7,500 in 2023.

Elsewhere on the Web

There are other salary and hourly paycheck calculators like this on the Internet, including the very well done tools available at PaycheckCity.com. PaycheckCity's State Salary Paycheck Calculators allow you to determine the amount of state income tax withholding that will be taken out of your paycheck in addition to what the federal government will take out. Payroll processing giant ADP also has a salary paycheck calculator that will give you good results. Overall, we find the format of PaycheckCity's calculators to be more user friendly, but ADP's version has the benefit of having an all-in-one user interface.

If however you live in one of the nine states that have no personal income tax (Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, or Wyoming), our tool above will provide you with a very good estimate of your actual take-home pay after Uncle Sam has left his greasy fingerprints all over it.

Previously on Political Calculations

We've been in the business of calculating people's paychecks (not including state income tax withholding) since 2005!

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About Political Calculations

Welcome to the blogosphere's toolchest! Here, unlike other blogs dedicated to analyzing current events, we create easy-to-use, simple tools to do the math related to them so you can get in on the action too! If you would like to learn more about these tools, or if you would like to contribute ideas to develop for this blog, please e-mail us at:

ironman at politicalcalculations

Thanks in advance!

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