The number on the offer letter and the number that changes your take-home pay are not the same number. This tool gives you the gross side of a raise; pair it with the take-home calculator for what actually lands in your account.
Gross figures before taxes. Annual amounts assume your hours x 52 weeks.
| 2026 single-filer bracket | Taxable income range |
|---|---|
| 10% | $0 to $12,400 |
| 12% | $12,400 to $50,400 |
| 22% | $50,400 to $105,700 |
Bracket edges per IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, standard deduction $16,100 for a single filer. Checked July 1, 2026. See our editorial standards.
Know the percent, and new pay is old pay times 1 plus the percent divided by 100. Know the new dollar amount, and the percent is the gap divided by the old pay, times 100. A $25 hourly rate with a 5 percent raise becomes $26.25, a $1.25 hourly gain, which is $2,600 a year at 40 hours a week. A jump from $52,000 to $56,000 is a $4,000 gain, or 7.69 percent. Both directions use the same two inputs; the calculator above just runs whichever direction your numbers give it.
A raise that pushes part of your income into a new bracket is not a loss, and it is not even close to one. The federal system taxes each bracket's dollars at that bracket's rate, nothing more. Take someone earning $49,000 taxable income (already inside the 12 percent band above) who gets a raise that lifts taxable income to $52,000. Only the $1,600 that crosses into the 22 percent band is taxed at 22 percent; the other $48,900 keeps its 10 and 12 percent rates exactly as before. The raise still adds money to every paycheck. FICA does not complicate this further since Social Security and Medicare apply at a flat rate on wages regardless of bracket, aside from the wage base cap and the Additional Medicare Tax threshold.
This tool compares two gross pay figures and stops there. It does not apply tax brackets, FICA, state tax, or inflation, and it does not know whether your raise was a cost-of-living adjustment or a merit increase. For the after-tax version of a new salary or hourly rate, run the result through the take-home pay calculator or the paycheck calculator. A raise is also a common trigger to revisit your W-4, particularly if it moves you into a new bracket or you have picked up a second job since you last filed one.
Sources: IRS tax year 2026 inflation adjustments, IRS Topic No. 751.
No. Only the slice of income sitting inside the new bracket is taxed at that bracket's rate. Every dollar below the threshold keeps its old, lower rate. A raise that crosses a bracket line always leaves you with more take-home pay than before, just not quite the full gross amount.
A percent increase compounds into future raises and bonus calculations that are often set as a percent of salary, while a flat lump sum does not carry forward. Over several review cycles a percent raise is usually worth more, even if a lump sum looks larger the first year.
It can. A meaningful raise, especially one that crosses into a new bracket or adds a second job's worth of income, is a common trigger for reviewing your W-4 so your withholding still matches your new liability instead of under or over withholding all year.
No. This tool compares old pay to new pay in nominal dollars and does not adjust for inflation. A raise that is smaller than the change in prices still shows as a gross gain here, even though it may not maintain your buying power.
Divide the annual increase by your number of pay periods for a rough per-check gain, then expect the after-tax version to be smaller once federal, FICA and any state tax apply. Run the new salary through the take-home pay calculator for the after-tax per-check number.