What actually reaches your account after federal tax, Social Security, Medicare, and Arizona’s own brackets — with every line shown separately, so you can check it against a real payslip.
One paycheck line by line, and the pay period in which Social Security stops and every remaining cheque gets bigger.
What a raise leaves you after tax, and what a bonus is withheld at versus what it actually costs.
The bracket ladder drawn out — every bracket, the income that landed in it, and why a raise can never leave you with less.
What actually comes out of an American paycheck in 2026 — federal brackets, FICA, and all fifty states' own rules — plus the take-home spread on one identical salary, computed rather than asserted.
A bonus arrives with a third missing and everyone concludes bonuses are taxed punitively. They are not. Withholding and tax are different things, and the difference comes back to you.
Convert every offer to take-home before you answer, match offers across state lines, and counter with scripts that work — with the arithmetic computed rather than asserted.
Self-employment tax is 14.13% of profit, not 15.3%. Price your rate, reserve on receipt, hit the safe harbour, and know when an S-corp is worth it — computed, not asserted.
Arizona guide
Arizona's income tax is the easiest in the country to explain. One rate, 2.5%, applied to everything above a standard deduction that matches the federal one. There are no brackets to walk, no filing-status thresholds to check, and no bracket table that goes stale in January.
On $85,000 a single filer pays $1,731 in Arizona income tax and takes home $66,896 — third-lowest of the 41 states that levy an income tax at all.
A note before you start. This is general education, not tax advice. Federal figures are tax year 2026, from IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and the Social Security Administration; Arizona's rate and rules come from this site's own sourced 50-state dataset, citing A.R.S. Title 43 and the Arizona Department of Revenue. Every dollar figure is computed by the same engine the site's calculators use, on a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependents or pre-tax deferrals unless stated. Arizona's transaction privilege tax and property tax are discussed qualitatively.
Across incomes, single filer:
Notice the effective rate climbing even though the statutory rate never moves. That is the standard deduction at work: $15,750 sheltered from a flat 2.5% is worth the same dollars to everyone, so it is a bigger share of a small salary than a large one. A flat tax is still mildly progressive as long as it sits behind a deduction.
The joint benefit is a flat $393 at every income above $45,000, and that constancy is the flat tax showing its shape. Arizona's joint standard deduction is double the single one — $31,500 against $15,750 — and 2.5% of the extra $15,750 is $393.75. There are no wider brackets to move into, because there is only one bracket.
Compare a graduated state: Minnesota's joint benefit at $85,000 is $1,264, and it grows with income because the couple's income spreads across bracket thresholds that also doubled. Arizona's does neither.
Read the full Arizona guide →16 min read · Updated 2026-09-01