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Your bracket is not your tax rate. See the difference.
The single most misunderstood idea in personal finance: only the dollars inside a bracket pay that bracket's rate. This visualizer fills each 2026 federal bracket with your taxable income, shows marginal versus effective rates side by side, and tells you the room left before your next dollar gets more expensive.
Anyone weighing overtime, a side gig, or a Roth conversion uses it to see their real marginal rate and bracket headroom — the two numbers every year-end tax decision depends on.
Marginal is the rate on your NEXT dollar of income — the one that matters for decisions about raises, overtime, and Roth conversions. Effective is total tax divided by income — always lower, because early dollars are taxed at 10% and 12% no matter what bracket you top out in.
Never. Only the dollars above $50,400 of taxable income (single, 2026) pay 22%. Everything below keeps its original 10% or 12% rate. A dollar that crosses the line cannot raise the tax on a single earlier dollar — the visualizer above shows this layer by layer.
It is the amount of extra income — overtime, a side gig, a Roth conversion — you can add at your current rate before the next bracket makes each new dollar costlier. For tax planning at year-end, that headroom number is the whole game.