Primary sources
Revenue Procedure 2025-32
Establishes: 2026 federal marginal tax rate tables and the standard deduction ($16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household).
Used for: Federal income tax on every calculator and page.
IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2026 (IR-2025-103)
Establishes: Plain-language summary of the 2026 adjustments, including confirmation that the seven marginal rates (10%–37%) were made permanent under the OBBBA.
Used for: Cross-check on the bracket structure and standard deduction figures.
2026 Cost-of-Living Adjustment (COLA) Fact Sheet
Establishes: 2026 Social Security taxable wage base of $184,500; OASDI rate of 6.2%; Medicare rate of 1.45% with no wage cap; Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% on earnings above $200,000 ($250,000 married filing jointly).
Used for: All FICA calculations, including the wage-base cap and the high-earner surtax.
2026 Tax Brackets and Federal Income Tax Rates
Establishes: Independent restatement of the Rev. Proc. 2025-32 bracket and deduction figures.
Used for: Second-source check on federal figures before they ship.
State revenue department rate schedules (2026)
Establishes: Statutory 2026 income tax rate, standard deduction, and personal exemption for each state that taxes wages.
Used for: The state layer of every calculation. Each state's own revenue department is the controlling authority for its rate; where a state's structure is complex, the simplification we apply is documented below.
What we do not source from
We do not derive figures from other calculators, aggregator sites, or secondary summaries. The Tax Foundation reference above is used only as an independent second read on figures we have already taken from the IRS — never as the origin of a number. If a figure cannot be traced to an issuing authority, it does not ship.
Where our figures are estimates
Two categories of simplification apply, and both are labelled wherever they appear:
- Progressive-bracket states. For the 26 states and the District of Columbia that use graduated brackets, the calculator currently applies a flagged effective-rate approximation rather than the full bracket table. These states deliberately have no dedicated landing pages — publishing an estimate as though it were an exact figure is the specific failure mode this site exists to avoid. Exact tables are being added state by state.
- Utah’s taxpayer tax credit. Utah uses a phasing credit rather than a standard deduction. We approximate it with a deduction-style adjustment, which tracks closely at typical salaries and diverges at the phase-out edges.
What is outside scope
Local and municipal income taxes, state disability and paid-family-leave premiums, employer benefit deductions, and the effect of your specific Form W-4 entries are not modelled. Where any of these materially affects take-home pay in a given state — Ohio and Pennsylvania municipalities, Washington’s WA Cares premium, Indiana’s county taxes among them — the relevant state page says so directly.
Corrections
If a figure here disagrees with an issuing authority, the authority is right and we are wrong. Report it via the contact page with the page and the number, and it will be treated as a defect: fixed at the source so the calculator and every derived page update together. Material corrections are recorded on the verification page.
Frequently asked questions
Where does SalarySolve get its tax data?
Federal brackets and the standard deduction come from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, published 9 October 2025. FICA rates and the $184,500 Social Security wage base come from the Social Security Administration's 2026 COLA fact sheet, published 24 October 2025. State rates come from each state's own department of revenue. All five sources are listed with direct links on this page.
Is SalarySolve affiliated with the IRS?
No. SalarySolve is an independent project with no affiliation to the IRS, the Social Security Administration, or any state revenue department. We cite their publications; we do not speak for them.
How current are the figures?
All figures reflect tax year 2026. Each page displays the date its rates were last verified, and those dates advance only when the underlying figures actually change — they are not refreshed on every build to manufacture an appearance of freshness.
Why don't some states have their own page?
Because we only publish dedicated pages where our figures are exact. The 25 states with no income tax or a single flat rate qualify. The 26 progressive-bracket states are shown as clearly-flagged estimates in the calculator, and get pages as exact bracket tables ship.