Texas Paycheck Calculator 2026

How this calculator works

A Texas paycheck has no state line on it at all. There is no state income tax to withhold, no city or county income tax underneath it, and — unlike Washington, the other large state that taxes no wages — no state payroll program deducted from your pay. What is left is federal, and only federal.

The calculator applies three deductions, in this order:

• Federal income tax. Your gross pay minus the standard deduction for your filing status, run through the 2026 federal brackets. For 2026 the standard deduction is $16,100 for a single filer, $32,200 for married filing jointly, and $24,150 for head of household.
• Social Security at 6.2% of gross wages, up to the 2026 wage base of $184,500. Earnings above that are not subject to it.
• Medicare at 1.45% of all wages, with no cap, plus the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax on wages above $200,000.

That is the whole list. Rates come from the agencies that set them: the IRS for the federal brackets, the standard deduction and FICA, cross-checked against the Social Security Administration for the wage base. The Texas side was read directly from the law itself — the Texas Constitution and the Texas Labor Code, on the Texas Legislature’s own statutes site — on August 27, 2026. Our full sourcing is on the methodology page.

What the calculator deliberately does not do: it does not itemize deductions, apply tax credits, model multiple jobs, or account for health insurance premiums and other employer benefit deductions. Those are personal to your W-4 and your benefits election, and guessing at them would make the number look precise while being wrong.

Many of the people asking this question are paid by the hour, not by the year. The calculator above takes an hourly rate directly — switch How often you are paid to Per hour, tell it how many hours a week you actually work, and it will show your take-home pay per hour, per week or per year.

Texas makes this arithmetic unusually clean. Because the state withholds nothing, your net hourly rate is your gross rate minus federal tax and FICA, and nothing else. The same $25 an hour in Washington nets $20.79 after Paid Leave and WA Cares come out, against $21.14 here.

It matters more in Texas than the size of the state might suggest. Oil and gas field work, construction, warehousing and freight, hospital shifts and retail are all paid by the hour, and all of them run on schedules that vary week to week. Your real annual income depends on hours you do not fully control.

Why we ask your hours instead of assuming 2,080

Most hourly calculators multiply your rate by 2,080 and call it your salary. That number assumes exactly 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, with no unpaid time off and no slow weeks — which is precisely what hourly work often is not. At 35 hours a week the same rate produces a materially smaller annual figure, and sometimes a lower tax bracket with it. We ask rather than assume.

What $20 an hour comes to in Texas

At 40 hours a week, $20 an hour is $35,606 a year after tax, or about $2,967.13 a month. Your effective rate is 14.4%, and your real take-home rate is $17.12 an hour. That is the number worth carrying in your head when you are comparing job offers.

What $25 and $30 an hour come to

At $25 an hour you take home about $43,962 a year, a real rate of $21.14. At $30 it is $52,318, a real rate of $25.15. Notice that a $5 raise on paper is worth less than $5 in your pocket — that is progressive taxation doing exactly what it is designed to do.

Overtime, tips and shift differentials

For withholding purposes, overtime, reported tips and shift or holiday differentials are ordinary wages: your employer withholds federal income tax, Social Security and Medicare on them exactly as on your base rate. A big overtime week can even push that single paycheck into a higher withholding band, which is why it sometimes looks disappointing on the stub. Enter your realistic average hours, including overtime, for the most useful figure.

For what you finally owe, 2026 is different, and this calculator does not model it. Two deductions created by the One, Big, Beautiful Bill run from 2025 through 2028:

• Qualified tips — up to $25,000 a year deductible, for people in occupations that customarily and regularly receive tips.
• Qualified overtime — up to $12,500 a year ($25,000 filing jointly). It covers only the premium half of time-and-a-half required by the Fair Labor Standards Act, not the whole overtime paycheck.

Both phase out above $150,000 of modified adjusted gross income ($300,000 filing jointly), and both are available whether you itemize or take the standard deduction. They are claimed on your return, on Schedule 1-A — not through your paycheck. So the figure above still reflects what comes out during the year; if a meaningful part of your pay is FLSA overtime, your final tax bill may be lower than it implies. Source: IRS, Working Families Tax Cuts, read August 27, 2026.

What this calculator does not cover

This tool models federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare and the payroll programs your state actually runs — nothing more. It deliberately leaves out:

• Itemized deductions and federal tax credits — the Child Tax Credit, the Earned Income Tax Credit, education credits. The engine always applies the standard deduction; there is no itemizing path.
• A second job, self-employment income or 1099 pay. Every dollar you enter is treated as one employer’s W-2 wages, taxed at the employee share of Social Security and Medicare — not the self-employment tax a 1099 worker actually owes.
• Pre-tax benefits other than the 401(k) field — health insurance premiums, an HSA or FSA, commuter benefits. The only amount taken out before tax is the percentage you enter for a 401(k).
• Local taxes — city income tax, county tax, or a school-district tax. Where a state levies one, our methodology page says so by name; this calculator does not add that line, with two exceptions: the Indiana and Maryland calculators add the local income tax for the county you choose.
• Overtime premiums. An hourly rate is multiplied by the hours you enter; it does not add a time-and-a-half rate for hours worked past 40 in a week.
• Wage garnishments or court-ordered deductions — child support, a wage levy. Your result assumes none exist.
• The Additional Medicare Tax, at the single-filer threshold. The 0.9% surtax above $200,000 is applied at that one figure for every filing status, the way an employer actually withholds it — not the higher threshold a married couple filing jointly may end up owing at tax return time.
• Married filing separately, or a qualifying surviving spouse. The calculator only offers single, married filing jointly, and head of household.

None of these are in the estimate. Some of them change what you owe or get back when you file, and a calculator cannot ask for everything they depend on. See why your pay stub will differ for the details.

Key facts that affect your take-home pay in Texas

The income tax ban is constitutional, not just a policy

Most no-income-tax states simply have not passed one. Texas has gone further and put the prohibition in its constitution. Article 8, Section 24-a, headed “INDIVIDUAL INCOME TAX PROHIBITED”, reads: “The legislature may not impose a tax on the net incomes of individuals, including an individual’s share of partnership and unincorporated association income.” It was added on November 5, 2019.

What changed in 2019, and why it matters

The prohibition replaced something weaker. In the constitution as published today, the entry immediately above it reads “Sec. 24. (Repealed Nov. 5, 2019.)” — the same date Section 24-a was added. Whatever the old section allowed, it is gone, and what stands in its place removes the power from the legislature outright rather than making it difficult to use. That is why a Texas paycheck is unusually predictable over a long horizon.

Capital gains were banned in November 2025

Article 8, Section 24-b, “CAPITAL GAINS TAX PROHIBITED”, was added on November 4, 2025 — recent enough that many pages have not caught up. It covers a tax on the “realized or unrealized capital gains of an individual, family, estate, or trust”. This does not touch your paycheck, but it does matter if you hold shares, sell a property or receive equity compensation.

What the capital gains ban explicitly leaves alone

Section 24-b names three taxes it does not affect: an ad valorem tax on property, a sales tax, and a use tax. That list is the answer to “so how does Texas pay for anything?” The revenue comes from property and consumption rather than income, so a high take-home pay figure is only one side of the ledger. Weigh a Texas offer on property tax and housing costs too, not on the paycheck alone.

Unemployment insurance is employer-only, by statute

Texas Labor Code Section 204.003, “CONTRIBUTION NOT DEDUCTED FROM WAGES”, is unambiguous: “An employer may not deduct any part of a contribution from the wages of an individual in the employer’s employ.” Your employer pays it on the first $9,000 of your annual wages (Section 201.082). None of it is yours to pay, and none of it appears on your stub.

No state disability insurance and no paid family leave premium

Several states deduct a percentage for short-term disability or paid family leave. Texas has neither program, so there is no such line. This is the single clearest difference from Washington, where two state programs come out of every check.

Social Security stops, Medicare does not

Social Security is charged at 6.2% only up to $184,500 of wages in 2026. Cross that line and your take-home pay jumps mid-year, because the deduction simply stops. Medicare has no such cap, and adds 0.9% above $200,000.

Your effective rate is lower than your bracket

Being “in the 22% bracket” does not mean 22% of your income goes in tax. Only the dollars above the bracket threshold are taxed at that rate. On $75,000 in Texas the total federal bite, FICA included, is 17.9% — and there is nothing above it.

There is no local income tax underneath

In some states a no-income-tax headline is undercut by a city or county levy. Not here: the constitutional prohibition removes the power to tax net income from the legislature, and Texas cities have no independent authority to create one. Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio all withhold the same thing from your pay, which is nothing.

Common mistakes people make

Reading the paycheck as the whole picture

The most expensive mistake on this page. Texas funds itself through property and sales taxes instead of income tax, and the constitution says so in the very section that bans capital gains. A larger paycheck can be offset by a property tax bill you did not model. Compare total cost of living, not net pay.

Assuming no income tax means an enormous difference

Against a high-tax state the gap is real and large. Against another no-tax state it is small: a Texas worker on $75,000 keeps about $1,040 a year more than the same worker in Washington, and that is the entire practical difference between the two.

Confusing the employer’s unemployment tax with a deduction

Texas employers pay unemployment contributions on your wages, and the rate is sometimes quoted as though it were a payroll deduction. It is not. Section 204.003 forbids deducting any part of it from wages.

Using an annual figure when you are paid hourly

Multiplying an hourly rate by 2,080 assumes a full year of full weeks. If your hours vary, set the calculator to Per hour and enter your realistic average instead.

Expecting the calculator to match the paystub to the dollar

It will not, and no calculator can. Your employer withholds from your W-4, including any extra amount you asked for; we estimate your liability on a simplified wage situation. A gap of a few percent is normal. See the disclaimer.

Example calculation

A single filer earning $75,000 a year in Houston, taking the standard deduction, with no 401(k) contribution:

The same salary in Washington leaves $60,552.13, because Washington withholds Paid Family and Medical Leave and WA Cares. The gap is $1,040 a year — small, but it is the entire practical difference between the two states’ paychecks.

Compare with neighboring states

Texas’s advantage only shows up in comparison. These are the states people actually weigh it against:

• Washington — also no income tax on wages, but two state payroll programs come out of every check, and it does tax capital gains. Texas is the cleaner of the two.
• Nevada — the other no-tax state with an identical paycheck. The difference is what each state charges you elsewhere, not what it withholds.
• California — the comparison behind a large share of moves into Texas, and the widest gap of any pair here.
• Oklahoma — a progressive state income tax immediately across the northern line.
• Louisiana — a flat state income tax just across the eastern border, and a common comparison along the Gulf.
• New Mexico — a progressive state income tax on the western border.

Calculators for the unlinked states are being written. Each one needs its own rates read from that state’s own agency before it goes live — see the state index.

Sources

Every figure on this page is read from an official document and dated, not taken from another calculator — the federal ones from the IRS and the Social Security Administration, the Texas ones from the state’s own documents below. Each one carries the date we last checked that it still answers. If one of our numbers disagrees with one of theirs, they are right and we have a defect to fix — tell us.

The documents these figures are read from

• Texas Constitution, Article 8, Section 24-a — the ban itself: the legislature may not impose a tax on the net incomes of individuals.
• Texas Labor Code, Section 204.003 — Contribution Not Deducted From Wages — the rule that an employer may not deduct any part of an unemployment contribution from wages.
• IRS — 2026 inflation adjustments (Rev. Proc. 2025-32) — the federal brackets and the $16,100 standard deduction.
• IRS — Topic no. 751, Social Security and Medicare withholding rates — the 6.2% and 1.45% rates and the 0.9% Additional Medicare Tax.
• SSA — Contribution and benefit base — the $184,500 Social Security wage base.

The agencies that set them

These are the offices that set the figures. We link them so you can start from the source yourself, but an agency’s own summary page is not always current, and we do not claim that these pages carry the 2026 number — several of them do not. Where a rate was read somewhere else, in a statute, a withholding guide or an estimated-tax form, the exact document and the date we read it are on our methodology page.

• Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts — Taxes.

All links checked September 30, 2026.

Related reading

• Paycheck calculators by state — the full index, including which states have no income tax at all.
• Texas salary to hourly — what an annual salary is worth per hour in Texas, after tax and not just before.
• Methodology — the exact formula, every 2026 figure with its official source, and what these calculators deliberately do not model.
• Why your pay stub will differ — pre-tax deductions, credits and W-4 settings, and how much difference is normal.