Salary Raise Calculator
Salary Raise Calculator
New salary, extra take-home pay, and the real value of a raise after inflation.
New salary, extra take-home pay, and the real value of a raise after inflation.
We Are Calculator
Professional Financial Tools
8/25/2026
Used with 2026 federal brackets and the standard deduction to estimate the after-tax value of the raise.
Set to 0 for states with no income tax (TX, FL, WA, NV, SD, WY, AK, TN, NH).
A raise below inflation is a pay cut in real terms.
A 5.00% increase — $3,000 more per year, $250 per month before tax.
You keep 75.3% of the raise after federal tax, state tax and FICA. Your marginal federal rate is now 12%.
Your purchasing power rises by this much once inflation is accounted for.
Because future raises compound off a higher base, a one-time raise keeps paying for the rest of your career.
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Open calculatorA raise gets announced as one number — "you're getting 5%" — and then a smaller, less satisfying number shows up in your paycheck. That gap is not a mistake. It's federal income tax, FICA, and your state rate all taking a bite, and because federal tax is progressive, the bite on your raise is usually a bigger percentage than the bite on your current salary.
This calculator does three things a plain "X% raise" number can't:
Still negotiating the number itself? See how to negotiate a raise for a step-by-step approach, check the current benchmark for your situation in average raise for a promotion, or see how far the same raise actually goes depending where you live in the real value of a raise by state.
Everything runs in your browser. Nothing you type is sent to a server, and there is no signup.
The calculator runs your salary through both marginal tax brackets, using the 2026 federal brackets and standard deduction, before and after the raise, then compares the two:
Worked example, matching this calculator's defaults — $60,000 salary, single filer, 5% raise, 5% state rate:
FICA is calculated the same way it hits your paycheck: Social Security tax stops once your wages pass the $184,500 wage base, while Medicare has no cap. For most raises well under that threshold, that distinction doesn't move the number much — it matters more for high earners near the cap.
A raise below inflation is a pay cut you don't notice until your grocery bill tells you. The calculator compares your raise percentage to your expected inflation rate:
At the defaults — a 5% raise against 2.5% expected inflation — your real, purchasing-power-adjusted raise is 2.44%, not 5%. That's still a genuine gain, but it's less than half of what the headline number suggests. If inflation ran at 5% instead, this same raise would be a real-terms wash.
The calculator projects your salary forward assuming a steady annual raise rate thereafter (3% by default) and totals the gap between "with this raise" and "without it." At the defaults, a single $3,000 raise today is worth $34,391.64 in cumulative extra earnings over the next 10 years — because every future raise compounds off the higher base, not the old one. This is the mechanical reason it's usually worth negotiating hard on the first raise in a new role: the effect never resets. See what a steady raise rate adds up to over 5, 10, 20 and 30 years for the full breakdown, and how your raise compares to 2026 national raise benchmarks.
Run the new gross salary through federal income tax brackets, FICA, and your state rate, then compare it to your current net pay. Because Social Security tax stops at the annual wage base and federal brackets are progressive, the take-home value of a raise is rarely the same percentage as the raise itself.
It's a real increase of roughly 0.5% — modest but positive. A raise below the inflation rate is a pay cut in real terms even though the number on your payslip went up, which is why comparing the nominal raise to inflation matters more than the raise on its own.
Federal income tax is progressive, so the additional income is taxed at your marginal rate rather than your average rate. Add FICA and state tax, and a meaningful share of a gross raise never reaches your bank account — the effect is largest for people crossing into a higher bracket.
Considerably more than five percent of one year's salary, because every future raise compounds on the higher base. This is why negotiating an early raise is worth more than the first-year figure suggests — the gap between two salary paths widens every year.
Go deeper than the calculator — the full playbook, explained.
The average 2026 merit raise is 3.1–3.2%, with total increases (including promotions and COLA) around 3.4–3.5%. See how your raise compares by performance tier, promotion type, and industry.
US private-industry wages grew 3.1-3.4% year-over-year through 2026 per BLS data. See the year-by-year trend, whether real wages actually rose, and what compounding a raise looks like over 10, 20, and 30 years.
A step-by-step approach to negotiating a raise — when to ask, how to build your case with market data, what to say, and how to counter a lowball offer.
The average 2026 promotion raise is about 8.5%, per Mercer's compensation survey — roughly 2.5x a standard merit increase. See how it breaks down and what to do if your offer is lower.
A $75,000 salary getting a 5% raise keeps 47% more real purchasing power in South Dakota than in California. We computed the after-tax, cost-of-living-adjusted value of the same raise in every state using real 2026 tax brackets and BEA price data.