Hours times rate is arithmetic, not a tax rule
Gross pay for an hourly job is the rate times hours per week times weeks. Forty hours and fifty-two weeks are the blanks on the form, not a section of the Internal Revenue Code. Change either number if the job is not full time. Twenty-five dollars an hour for 40 hours and 52 weeks is $52,000. A salary typed in directly skips that multiplication and uses the salary as the gross wage. The hourly equivalent is then the salary divided by hours times weeks, so you can see what the salary implies. Overtime premiums are not added. The overtime calculator is the place for time-and-a-half after 40 hours, or for California's daily rule. This page starts from the gross you have already built.
A shorter year is still arithmetic. Thirty hours and forty weeks at the same $25 is $30,000. The tax calculation then uses that lower gross. Nothing in the revenue procedure says a year contains 52 weeks. The weeks box is there so a seasonal job is not silently treated as a full year.
The 2026 standard deduction and the rate tables
Federal income tax for 2026 comes from Revenue Procedure 2025-32, which the IRS described in news release IR-2025-103 on 9 October 2025. The standard deduction is $16,100 for a single person or for married filing separately, $32,200 for married filing jointly or a surviving spouse, and $24,150 for a head of household. Those amounts already include the changes the IRS attributed to the One, Big, Beautiful Bill. The calculator subtracts the deduction that matches the filing status you pick. It does not add the extra standard deduction for age or blindness, and it does not itemize. If your itemized deductions would be higher, the tax here is too high.
The tax uses the seven rates the revenue procedure keeps in force: 10, 12, 22, 24, 32, 35 and 37 percent. Each row is a base tax plus a percentage of the excess over a threshold, applied to taxable income after the standard deduction. A single person's taxable income of $60,000 is $7,912 under that table. The 37 percent row for a single person starts above $640,600 of taxable income. Joint, head of household, and married filing separately each have their own table. The calculator switches table when you switch status.
On the $52,000 example, a single filer's standard deduction leaves taxable income of $35,900. The income tax is $4,060. That is the check stored with the paycheck function. It is the tax on a year of wages after the standard deduction. It is not the amount printed on one Friday stub.
Social Security, Medicare, and the wage base
Employee Social Security and Medicare are not reduced by the standard deduction. IRS Topic 751 states the employee Social Security rate at 6.2 percent and the wage base for 2026 at $184,500. Wages above that base are not subject to Social Security tax. A salary of $250,000 therefore draws Social Security of 6.2 percent of $184,500, which is $11,439, not 6.2 percent of the whole salary. Employee Medicare is 1.45 percent of all wages, with no wage base. On $52,000, Social Security is $3,224 and Medicare is $754.
Topic 751 also says the employer withholds the 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax once wages paid to the employee in the year pass $200,000, and that this withholding ignores filing status. On $250,000 the additional withholding is 0.9 percent of $50,000, which is $450. The filing-status thresholds on the tax return are different. Topic 560 sets them at $250,000 for married filing jointly, $125,000 for married filing separately, and $200,000 for other taxpayers. The paycheck page follows the withholding rule of $200,000 so the line looks like a paystub. It is not Form 8959. A joint return can owe less Additional Medicare Tax than the employer withheld.
Pre-tax deductions that reduce Social Security wages, such as a traditional 401(k), are not subtracted automatically. Type the wage that is actually subject to FICA if you already know it. A Roth contribution does not reduce those wages. State income tax, city tax, and state disability insurance are not deducted. If a state rate is not taken from that state's own table, it is left out.
Why this is not the Friday withholding
Employers withhold income tax using Form W-4, the pay period, and the percentage method or the wage-bracket method in Publication 15-T. Two people with the same annual salary can have different withholding because one claimed a dependent, one asked for extra withholding, or one is paid weekly and the other monthly. This page annualises first and then applies the rate table to the year. Divide the yearly tax by the number of paychecks only if you want a rough period amount, and expect the real stub to differ.
The net line is gross pay minus federal income tax minus employee Social Security, Medicare, and additional Medicare withholding. On $52,000 for a single filer that is $52,000 minus $4,060 minus $3,224 minus $754, which is $43,962. Nothing is due for additional Medicare at that wage. Self-employment tax is a different charge, on net profit rather than on wages, and it is on its own calculator. Do not add the 15.3 percent self-employment rate to this wage. Wages have already been charged employee FICA at 7.65 percent, up to the wage base. Switching the form to a yearly salary of $250,000 and married filing jointly shows the wage-base stop in one line: Social Security is $11,439, additional Medicare withholding is $450, and the standard deduction used for the income-tax table is $32,200. Head of household uses $24,150. Those are the IR-2025-103 figures, not a state table and not a W-4.