Net-to-Gross & Gross-Up Calculator
The take-home you need, and the gross behind it
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Planning indicator only. It does not assess every part of a household's finances or replace individualized professional advice.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter the annual take-home you actually need — the number you would have to see land in the account after federal, state and payroll tax.
- 02
Or skip that and use the second box instead: a net bonus, signing payment or relocation check someone has promised you will receive. The page solves that as a separate problem, because a bonus stacks on wages you have already earned rather than starting from the first dollar.
- 03
If you are solving the bonus case, enter the wages already paid this year. This is what decides where the bonus stacks and therefore what it is taxed at — a gross-up quoted without it is a guess.
- 04
Add your state income tax rate (zero in the nine states that levy none) and any pre-tax retirement deferrals, which cut income tax but not Social Security or Medicare.
- 05
Check the standard deduction against your filing status — it ships at the $16,100 single figure, and the label names the $32,200 joint and $24,150 head-of-household ones — then read the solved gross against the two wrong answers beside it.
Formula
There is deliberately no closed form here, because the whole point of the page is that none exists. The FORWARD mapping is: taxable income = gross − pre-tax deferrals − standard deduction; federal tax = that run through the 2026 single-filer bracket schedule (10% to $12,400, 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, 24% to $201,775, 32% to $256,225, 35% to $640,600, 37% above); FICA = 6.2% on gross up to the $184,500 wage base + 1.45% on all of it + 0.9% above $200,000; state tax = (gross − pre-tax deferrals) × your state rate. Net = gross − deferrals − federal − FICA − state. The INVERSE is solved by bisection on that mapping rather than derived, because the bracket schedule is piecewise and no single rate inverts it. The two closed forms people reach for are both wrong and the page prints both: target ÷ (1 − marginal rate) overshoots ($106,610 against a true $94,058), and target ÷ (1 − effective rate) undershoots ($91,326). The BONUS gross-up is a second, separate solve. Federal tax on a bonus = the tax on (wages already paid + bonus) minus the tax on wages already paid — a difference, not a rate — with FICA measured against the wage-base room your existing wages have left.
Example
To take home $75,000 a year as a single filer with no state income tax and no pre-tax deferrals, you need a gross salary of $94,058 — $7,838 a month, $3,618 a pay period. Of that gross, $16,100 comes off as the standard deduction leaving $77,958 of taxable income; federal tax is $11,863 and Social Security and Medicare take $7,195, a total of $19,058 and an effective rate of 20.3%. Now look at the two shortcuts. Your marginal rate is 29.65% — 22% federal plus 7.65% of payroll tax — and $75,000 ÷ 0.7035 gives $106,610, which is $12,552 too high. Your effective rate measured at $75,000 of income is 17.88%, and $75,000 ÷ 0.8212 gives $91,326, which is $2,732 too low. The true answer sits between the two and neither shortcut can find it. The bonus case, run separately: promise someone $10,000 net on top of $120,000 of wages already paid this year. The properly solved gross is $14,578 — $3,463 of federal tax at the stacked 24% rate and $1,115 of Social Security and Medicare. Payroll's flat method divides $10,000 by one minus 29.65% and pays $14,215, which delivers exactly $10,000 in the check but leaves $248 owing at filing, because withholding is not tax.
Definitions
- Gross-up
- The extra an employer pays so a promised net amount actually arrives. The tax comes out of the employer's money rather than out of the promise.
- Bisection
- Solving by repeated halving of a bracketing interval. Used here because gross-to-net is monotone but piecewise, so it can be inverted numerically but not algebraically.
- Supplemental withholding rate
- The flat 22% payroll applies to a bonus for 2026, mandatory at 37% once supplemental wages for the year pass $1,000,000. A withholding convention, not a tax rate.
- Standard deduction
- 2026: $16,100 single, $32,200 married filing jointly, $24,150 head of household. Subtracted before the bracket schedule, which is why it is an editable field on a page that cannot ask your filing status.
- Section 125 premium
- A health premium taken through a cafeteria plan. Unlike a 401(k) deferral it escapes Social Security and Medicare as well as income tax.
Good to know
Two wrong answers, and where the right one sits
The instinct when you know a take-home figure and want the salary behind it is to divide by one minus a tax rate. Under a progressive schedule that is wrong, and it is wrong twice over, in opposite directions, depending on which rate you reach for. Take $75,000 of target take-home for a single filer with no state income tax. Your MARGINAL rate at the answer is 29.65% — 22% federal plus 7.65% of payroll tax — and $75,000 ÷ 0.7035 gives $106,610. That overshoots by $12,552, because it charges the marginal rate on the first dollars of the salary, which are actually taxed at 10% and 12% or not at all. Reach instead for the EFFECTIVE rate, measured at $75,000 of income, which is 17.88%: $75,000 ÷ 0.8212 gives $91,326, and that undershoots by $2,732, because the dollars you are adding sit at the top of the stack and are taxed at the margin, not at the average. The true answer is $94,058, and it sits between the two — always between the two, on any income and any schedule, which is the useful general fact here. The gap between the marginal and the effective rate at a given income is exactly the width of the error band, and it is widest for people in the middle of the schedule, where a large standard deduction and two low bands sit underneath a much higher marginal rate. There is no single rate that turns $75,000 into $94,058, because the function that turns gross into net is piecewise. Any method that uses one rate is choosing which end of the schedule to be wrong about.
Solving instead of dividing
If no rate inverts the schedule, the answer has to be found rather than derived, and the way to find it is to run the ordinary forward calculation repeatedly until it lands. Gross to net is monotone — more gross always produces more net, with no exceptions anywhere in the schedule — and that single property is what makes it solvable. Bracket the answer between zero and a gross large enough to overshoot the target, then take the midpoint: if the net it produces is too low, the answer is in the upper half; if too high, the lower. Halve the interval again. Forty iterations reduce any starting interval to a fraction of a cent, and unlike a fixed-point iteration this cannot fail to converge or run away to infinity, because the interval provably shrinks by half each step and always contains the answer. That is worth understanding because it tells you what the page is actually doing: exactly what a paycheck calculator does, run backwards, not a shortcut. It also tells you where the answer is only as good as its inputs. The forward mapping subtracts pre-tax deferrals, subtracts the standard deduction, runs the remainder through the 2026 single-filer brackets — 10% to $12,400, 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, then 24%, 32%, 35% and 37% above $640,600 — then charges 6.2% up to the $184,500 wage base, 1.45% on everything, 0.9% above $200,000, and your state rate on gross less deferrals. Change the standard deduction to $32,200 and you are solving the joint case approximately; the bracket bounds are still single-filer, so read it as a ceiling rather than a figure. Change it to $24,150 and you are approximating head of household the same way.
A bonus gross-up is a different problem
A salary is taxed from the first dollar up. A bonus is taxed from wherever your existing wages stopped — which means the correct grossing factor depends on where the payment lands in the schedule, not on any rate you could quote in advance. That is why the page asks what you have already earned this year, and why a gross-up quoted without it is a guess. Work an example: promise someone $10,000 net on top of $120,000 of wages already paid. The federal tax on the bonus is not a rate at all, it is a DIFFERENCE — the tax on the year with the bonus minus the tax on the year without it — which here starts in the 22% band and crosses into 24% almost immediately. Solved properly, the employer must pay $14,578: $3,463 of federal tax at the stacked rate and $1,115 of Social Security and Medicare come out, and exactly $10,000 arrives. Now watch what payroll actually does. It divides $10,000 by one minus the combined flat withholding rate — 22% supplemental plus 7.65% FICA, so 29.65% — and pays $14,215. That delivers exactly $10,000 in the check, and payroll has not made a mistake: it has answered the question it was asked. But withholding is not tax. The real liability on $14,215 stacked on $120,000 is $4,463 against $4,215 withheld, so $248 is still owed when the return is filed. The lesson is a negotiating one as much as an arithmetic one. 'You will receive $10,000 net' and 'we will gross it up at 22%' are different commitments, and the difference only surfaces in April. Ask which one is being offered, in writing.
Relocation, and the word to look for in the offer
Most people meet a gross-up for the first time in a relocation package, and it is the case where getting it wrong costs the most. Employer-paid moving money is taxable wages for civilians. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended both the employee moving-expense deduction and the employer exclusion for tax years 2018 through 2025, for everyone except active-duty military moving under orders — so check whether that suspension still stands for the year you actually move, because it was legislated with an expiry and expiry dates get extended. Under the suspension a company that pays a $15,000 moving bill and does not gross it up has handed you roughly $4,500 of tax liability on money that never passed through your hands. A lump-sum relocation allowance is the same problem in a friendlier wrapper: it arrives as wages, it is withheld on as supplemental wages, and the amount you can actually spend on the move is materially less than the number in the letter. Read the offer for the words 'grossed up' — their absence is the entire difference, and it is not a detail a recruiter will volunteer. Read the clause next to it as well. Most relocation agreements contain a clawback requiring repayment if you leave within twelve to twenty-four months, and they generally claw back the GROSS, including the tax the employer paid on your behalf and the tax you cannot get back by simply handing the money over. Someone who receives a $25,000 grossed-up package and resigns at month fourteen can owe the full $25,000 while having seen perhaps $16,000 of it. Where a clawback exists, ask whether it prorates by month; many do, and the ones that do not are negotiable more often than people assume.
Frequently asked questions
Why can't I just divide my target take-home by one minus my tax rate?
Because under a progressive schedule no such rate exists, and the division is wrong in both directions depending on which rate you pick. Divide $75,000 by one minus your marginal rate of 29.65% and you get $106,610 — $12,552 too high, because it charges the marginal rate on the first dollars of the salary, which are taxed at 10% and 12%. Divide by one minus your effective rate and you get $91,326 — $2,732 too low, because the dollars you are adding are taxed at the margin and not at the average. The true answer, $94,058, sits between them and can only be reached by solving for it.
How does the page solve it, if there is no formula?
By bisection on the forward mapping. Gross to net is monotone — more gross always means more net — so the page brackets the answer between zero and a gross large enough to overshoot, then halves the interval repeatedly until it converges. It runs the same arithmetic any paycheck calculator runs, just backwards, and it terminates in a fixed number of steps rather than iterating until something converges or does not.
What is a gross-up, exactly?
It is what an employer pays so that a promised NET amount actually arrives. Promise someone $10,000 net and hand them a $10,000 check and they receive about $7,000 — the gross-up is the extra the employer adds so the tax comes out of the employer's money rather than out of the promise. On $120,000 of wages already paid, a $10,000 net bonus needs $14,578 of gross: $3,463 of federal tax at the stacked rate and $1,115 of Social Security and Medicare come out, leaving exactly $10,000.
Why does payroll's gross-up leave me owing money in April?
Because payroll grosses up on WITHHOLDING rates, not on tax rates, and they are different things. Dividing $10,000 by one minus 29.65% of combined flat withholding gives $14,215, which does deliver exactly $10,000 in the check — payroll has done its job. But the real tax on $14,215 stacked on $120,000 of wages is $4,463 rather than the $4,215 withheld, so $248 is still owed when you file. 'You will receive $10,000 net' and 'we will gross it up at 22%' are not the same commitment, and the difference surfaces on the return.
Is my relocation package taxable?
For civilians, yes — employer-paid moving money is wages. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended both the moving-expense deduction and the employer exclusion for tax years 2018 through 2025 for everyone except active-duty military moving under orders, so check whether the suspension still stands for the year you actually move. A company that pays a $15,000 moving bill and does not gross it up has handed you a tax bill on money you never saw. Read the offer letter for the words 'grossed up' — their absence is the whole difference — and read the clawback beside it, because most relocation agreements require repayment if you leave inside twelve to twenty-four months and generally claw back the GROSS, including the tax the employer paid.
Which filing status do the brackets use?
The single-filer schedule for 2026: 10% to $12,400, 12% to $50,400, 22% to $105,700, then 24%, 32%, 35% and 37% above $640,600. Married filing jointly runs on roughly double those bounds through the 24% band and then diverges; head of household sits between. This engine takes numeric fields only and cannot ask for a filing status, so the standard deduction is editable — set it to $32,200 for a joint return or $24,150 for head of household and the answer is close. Leave it and read a joint filer's result as a ceiling rather than a figure.
How should I handle state tax?
As one flat rate you enter, because fifty graduated schedules cannot be a numeric field. Nine states levy no tax on wage income at all and zero is exactly right for them. About a dozen more run a genuinely flat rate, where the figure you enter is exact. The rest are graduated, and for those the page treats your average state rate as flat — which understates the gross slightly when the target is well above your current income and overstates it slightly below.
Do my 401(k) contributions reduce the gross I need?
Partly, and not by as much as you would expect. A pre-tax deferral comes off before federal and state income tax but NOT before Social Security or Medicare, because elective deferrals are excluded under section 402(g) and expressly included in wages under 3121(v)(1)(A). So 7.65% of every deferred dollar is taxed either way, and a bigger deferral does not reduce the salary you need by its full amount. A section 125 health premium is the opposite case and escapes both.