Salary Increase Calc
Open formulas and sources

Calculation Methodology

Every core formula, assumption, data period, and limitation is documented here so you can understand what the calculators do—and what they do not claim.

Pay-period conversions

Hourly pay is multiplied by hours per week and weeks per year. Daily pay uses days per week and weeks per year. Weekly pay uses weeks per year. Biweekly pay uses weeks per year divided by two. Semimonthly pay always uses 24 payments. Monthly uses 12, quarterly uses four, and annual uses one. Reverse conversions divide by the same factors.

A default 52-week schedule produces 26 biweekly paychecks. A custom 48-week schedule produces a generic factor of 24. Semimonthly remains 24 regardless, which is why biweekly and semimonthly are not interchangeable.

Three raise modes

Percentage

New annual pay = current annual pay × (1 + percentage ÷ 100)

Amount

The amount belongs to the selected pay period. It is annualized before it is added to current annual pay.

Target new pay

The target also belongs to the selected period. It is annualized first, then the old annual amount is subtracted to find the change. If current pay is zero, the dollar result remains valid but percentage change is shown as “Not defined.” Pay cuts down to −100% are allowed.

Inflation-adjusted raise

The calculator shows two distinct measures. The percentage-point gap is nominal raise minus CPI. The exact purchasing-power change uses the ratio of the two growth factors.

Exact real change = ((1 + nominal rate) ÷ (1 + CPI rate)) − 1

At a 5% raise and 3.5% CPI, the gap is 1.50 percentage points while the exact real change is about 1.45%. The default CPI is the U.S. CPI-U 12-month change for June 2026; it does not represent every household's personal cost of living.

2026 federal income tax estimate

The tax estimator annualizes old and new salary wages, adds other taxable income, subtracts pre-tax deductions, and optionally subtracts the filing-status standard deduction. Taxable income is clamped at zero. The full progressive bracket schedule is applied separately before and after the raise; the displayed federal amount is the difference.

This is not a flat 22% model. It uses Single, Married Filing Jointly, Married Filing Separately, or Head of Household brackets from the shared 2026 data file.

The pre-tax deductions field reduces federal taxable income in this simplified estimate. It does not reduce Social Security or Medicare wages, because different real-world benefits receive different tax treatment. Enter only deductions that you have independently confirmed reduce federal taxable income, and treat the result as an estimate.

FICA assumptions

Employee Social Security is 6.2% of wage income up to the $184,500 wage base. Medicare is 1.45% of wage income. Additional Medicare Tax is 0.9% above $200,000 for Single or Head of Household, $250,000 for Married Filing Jointly, and $125,000 for Married Filing Separately. Each component is calculated separately before and after the salary change.

State and local rate

The site does not infer state or local tax. If you enter a rate, the estimate multiplies the gross annual change by that rate. It is labeled as user-entered and is not an official state calculation.

Rounding

Intermediate values retain normal JavaScript number precision. Currency is rounded only for display, generally to two decimals. Tests compare unrounded results with tolerances. Percentage displays use up to two decimals.

Privacy and local calculations

Calculator values are processed in your browser. Default interaction does not save them. Device storage is used only after you enable remembering. Share values enter the URL fragment only after you click Share; fragments are not included in ordinary server requests. The analytics wrapper is inactive and designed never to accept raw salary or tax values.

Limitations

The take-home estimate does not include credits, itemized deductions, benefits, retirement contributions, bonuses, self-employment tax, capital gains, local withholding details, insurance deductions, W-4 elections, or a complete household tax situation. It is not tax, legal, financial, payroll, or employment advice.

Data sources

Change log