About calculatepaycheck.net

What this site is

calculatepaycheck.net is a paycheck calculator for the United States: what a salary or an hourly wage leaves after federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, state income tax and local wage tax, per payday, in 2026. Around the calculator sit 1,533 pages — one per state, city, salary amount and hourly rate, plus specific calculators, guides and comparisons — all rendered from the same engine so that a figure is never typed by hand. The site is written and maintained by one person, Pablo Ruiz Quintero, and operated from Spain; it says so rather than inventing an office.

Why it exists

The paycheck calculators that rank for these searches share a habit: they show a number without saying where it came from, and on the day we read them several were using figures from 2022 to 2025. None named an author or a check date. Most exist to sell something — payroll software, an introduction to a financial adviser, job listings — and the calculator is the bait. This site was built on the opposite bet: that a calculator which shows its sources and dates, publishes its verification log, corrects itself in public and sells nothing at launch will be trusted more, and that trust is worth more than a lead form.

How it is funded

At launch, by its author, with no advertising, no affiliate links and no lead capture on any page. The intended sources of revenue, declared in advance on the business page, are white-label and high-volume licences of the calculator and the API for payroll providers, HR platforms and publishers — the same engine, the same sources, under their brand — and nothing that would put a sales interest between the reader and the figure. If that changes, this page will say so before it does.

What it does not do

It does not give tax or payroll advice; every page says it is an estimate for planning. It does not store what you type: the calculation runs in your browser and only the computed figures reach the server when you ask for an explanation. It does not model state disability insurance, the territories or the alternative minimum tax, and it lists what else it leaves out on the calculator. It does not rate competitors: the comparison pages describe them with evidence and dates and let the reader decide. And it does not pretend to more reviewers than it has: one author, a public method, and a corrections page that anyone can add to.

Who writes it

I build tools that answer money questions people cannot answer for themselves. This site exists because the paycheck calculators already out there share a habit that bothered me: they show a number without saying where it came from, and a surprising share of those numbers are out of date.

My background is SEO and content in finance and economics. The same instinct runs through this site: make an opaque system legible, and show the source for every figure.

Everything here is calculated deterministically and checked against the document that sets the rule: the IRS for federal figures, each state revenue department for withholding, each city or county for local taxes. Where a figure could not be verified, the page says so.