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The raise is 5%. What lands in your check is not.
A 5% raise never arrives as 5% more take-home — federal brackets, Social Security, Medicare, and state tax each take their cut first. This calculator applies 2026 tax brackets to just the new dollars and shows the after-tax raise per paycheck, plus your true marginal rate on new income.
Anyone negotiating pay uses it to translate a percentage raise into after-tax dollars per paycheck — and to kill the "higher bracket means I lose money" myth with their own numbers.
No — that is the most persistent myth in personal finance. Brackets are marginal: only the dollars above a threshold pay the higher rate, never your whole salary. A raise always increases your take-home. The table shows your exact marginal rate on the new dollars.
For most single filers in the 12% or 22% federal brackets, roughly 70–80 cents per raise dollar after federal income tax, Social Security (6.2%), Medicare (1.45%), and a typical state rate. At default settings — $62,000 salary, 5% raise — it is $2,336 of the $3,100, a 75.4% keep rate.
Negotiate gross, but think after-tax. A $5,000 bump is ~$140 per biweekly check after taxes for most people — knowing that number keeps negotiations honest about what the raise actually buys.