Arizona Hourly Paycheck Calculator 2026

From an hourly rate to a paycheck in Arizona

An hourly paycheck starts from rate × hours and then loses exactly the same three taxes as a salaried one: federal income tax withholding by the IRS percentage method, FICA at 7.65%, and Arizona's own income tax. At $20 an hour and 40 hours a week, paid every two weeks, that is $1,600.00 gross: $108.15 of federal withholding, $122.40 of FICA, $20.67 of Arizona tax, and $1,348.78 in your account — 84.3% of gross.

The share you keep is higher at hourly wages than in most salaried examples because the federal brackets are gentle at the bottom: the first $16,100 a single filer earns in 2026 is not taxed at all, and the next slice only at 10%. What does not get gentler is FICA, which takes its 7.65% from the first dollar; for many hourly workers it is the largest line on the stub. At $15 an hour the take-home is $1,037.38 of $1,200.00 (86.4%); at $35 it is $2,258.75 of $2,800.00 (80.7%); at $60, $3,613.44 of $4,800.00 (75.3%).

The calculator takes the rate, the regular hours per pay period, the overtime and double-time hours, tips, and up to six rates for people who do more than one job for the same employer. Change the pay period and the hours field changes with it: 40 hours a week is 80 every two weeks, 86.67 twice a month, 173.33 a month. The «Show me the math» diagram under the result walks through the withholding on your own figures.

Overtime: the rules in Arizona

Federal law — the Fair Labor Standards Act — requires 1.5× your regular rate for hours beyond 40 in a workweek, for non-exempt employees. It says nothing about long days: 12 hours on Monday and nothing on Friday is 40 hours and no overtime under federal rules. Arizona follows the federal weekly rule and has no daily overtime requirement, so the calculator applies time-and-a-half only to hours you enter as overtime.

Ten overtime hours at $20 — $300.00 of extra gross every two weeks — turn the $1,348.78 paycheck into $1,582.33: $233.55 of the $300 survives, 77.8%. The rest is withheld at your marginal rate, and because withholding annualises each paycheck, a heavy overtime fortnight is withheld as if every fortnight were heavy. The excess comes back at filing.

Being «salaried» does not make you exempt from overtime. Exemption depends on duties and on a salary threshold; the exempt vs non-exempt guide covers who qualifies, and the overtime calculator handles daily rules, double time and the seventh-day rule in California.

The 2026 overtime deduction: what it does and does not do

From 2026, the *premium* portion of overtime pay — the extra half of time-and-a-half, not the whole overtime wage — is deductible on your federal return, up to $12,500 for a single filer and $25,000 on a joint return, shrinking by $100 for every $1,000 of income above $150,000 ($300,000 joint). On the ten-hour example above the premium is $100.00 per paycheck, $2,600 a year if it continues, and the calculator estimates a $2,600 deduction from it.

Two things it does not do. It does not change what your employer withholds: Publication 15-T has no line for it, so the paycheck looks exactly as it did in 2025 and the benefit arrives as a larger refund. And it does not touch FICA or Arizona tax: it is a federal income tax deduction only. The «withholding vs what you owe» box under the calculator shows the deduction's effect on the year, which is where it belongs.

The deduction applies to overtime required by the FLSA; extra pay your employer chooses to give above what the law requires does not qualify. Your 2026 W-2 will report qualified overtime separately, which is how the IRS expects you to claim it.

Tips, tip credit and the tip deduction

Reported tips are wages: they are subject to federal withholding, FICA and Arizona tax like any other pay, and your employer withholds the tax on them from your cash wages. At $20 an hour with $600 of tips every two weeks, the paycheck is $2,200.00 gross and $1,815.88 net — but the tips were already in your pocket, so the deposit is the net minus the $600 you already received, and a heavy tip fortnight can leave a small or even zero cash paycheck.

The 2026 tip deduction lets you deduct reported tips up to $25,000 a year from federal taxable income, phasing out above $150,000 of income, for occupations that customarily receive tips. Like the overtime deduction it changes nothing on the paycheck and everything at filing: on $600 of tips every two weeks the calculator estimates a $15,600 deduction and a correspondingly larger refund. FICA on tips is unchanged.

Tipped minimum wages are a separate matter. Federal law lets employers pay tipped workers as little as $2 an hour in cash if tips bring them to the full minimum; many states set a higher tipped minimum or abolish the tip credit altogether. The tip income calculator handles the cash wage, the tip credit and the deduction together.

Part-time, variable hours and multiple rates

Withholding is designed for steady pay and behaves oddly with variable hours. Because each paycheck is annualised on its own, a 60-hour fortnight is withheld as though you earned that all year and a 20-hour fortnight as though you earned that all year; over a year of ups and downs the total withheld is usually higher than the tax due, which is why hourly workers with irregular schedules tend to get refunds. The calculator's «withholding vs what you owe» box makes that visible if you enter your typical fortnight.

Two jobs at once are the classic under-withholding trap: each employer applies the full standard deduction as if it were your only income. Check the box in step 2(c) of the W-4 at both jobs, or use the W-4 fixer to put an extra amount on step 4(c) of one of them. Two rates with the same employer — a base rate and a differential, or two roles — are simpler: the calculator adds up to six rates and treats the total as one paycheck, which is what payroll does.

Part-time workers with a second income in the household should look at the joint result: at low hours the federal withholding on the part-time job alone is often zero, and the household's real marginal rate on those hours is set by the other income.

What your rate is worth a year

The standard conversion assumes 40 hours a week and 52 weeks, which is 2,080 hours: $15 an hour is $31,200 a year, $20 is $41,600, $25 is $52,000, $35 is $72,800, $50 is $104,000. Those are gross figures; after tax in Arizona the $20 rate comes to about $35,068 a year, and in a state with income tax somewhat less. The hourly to salary converter does the conversion in both directions, for any hours and weeks, before and after tax.

The 2,080-hour convention flatters an hourly rate slightly, because it counts no unpaid holidays or sick days. At 50 working weeks the $20 rate is $40,000; at 48 weeks, $38,400. A salaried job pays for the days off; an hourly one usually does not, and that difference — plus benefits and overtime eligibility — is what to weigh when comparing an hourly offer with a salaried one. The compare two jobs tool puts both on the same footing.

Minimum wage in Arizona in 2026

The federal minimum wage is $7 an hour, unchanged since 2009; a full-time paycheck at that rate in Arizona is $580.00 gross and $535.63 net every two weeks, $13,926 a year. Arizona's own minimum, its tipped minimum and any city minimums are being verified against the Arizona labor department and will be listed here with the document and date; until then the calculator uses the rate you enter.

At minimum wage the federal income tax line is small — $0.00 on the $580.00 example — and FICA is the tax that matters: $44.37 per paycheck. It is also the income range where the 2026 overtime and tip deductions and the earned income credit change the year's outcome most, so the refund box under the calculator is worth reading even when the paycheck itself looks simple.

Taxes on an hourly paycheck in Arizona

Federal withholding on hourly pay follows the same W-4 and the same Publication 15-T method as salaried pay. The calculator annualises the paycheck, subtracts the step-1 adjustment, reads the standard withholding table for your filing status, subtracts your step-3 credits and divides back by the number of pay periods. Arizona then applies its flat 2.50% to the annualised figure after a $16,100 deduction.

Pre-tax deductions work the same way as for salaried workers: a 401(k) contribution comes out before federal and Arizona income tax but not before FICA; health premiums and HSA contributions through a Section 125 plan come out before all three. Hourly workers are less often enrolled in these plans, and a $50-a-paycheck 401(k) contribution at $20 an hour costs only about $44.00 of take-home — the 401(k) chart under the calculator draws the curve.

Example hourly paychecks in Arizona: eight rates

All computed by the calculator's engine for a single filer with a clean W-4, 40 hours a week, paid every two weeks, no deductions, 2026 rates:

$12 an hour ($24,960 a year) → $960.00 gross, $847.81 take-home per paycheck (88.3% kept; federal $34.08, FICA $73.44, Arizona $4.67).

$15 an hour ($31,200 a year) → $1,200.00 gross, $1,037.38 take-home per paycheck (86.4% kept; federal $60.15, FICA $91.80, Arizona $10.67).

$18 an hour ($37,440 a year) → $1,440.00 gross, $1,224.22 take-home per paycheck (85.0% kept; federal $88.95, FICA $110.16, Arizona $16.67).

$22 an hour ($45,760 a year) → $1,760.00 gross, $1,473.34 take-home per paycheck (83.7% kept; federal $127.35, FICA $134.64, Arizona $24.67).

$25 an hour ($52,000 a year) → $2,000.00 gross, $1,660.18 take-home per paycheck (83.0% kept; federal $156.15, FICA $153.00, Arizona $30.67).

$30 an hour ($62,400 a year) → $2,400.00 gross, $1,971.58 take-home per paycheck (82.1% kept; federal $204.15, FICA $183.60, Arizona $40.67).

$40 an hour ($83,200 a year) → $3,200.00 gross, $2,530.15 take-home per paycheck (79.1% kept; federal $364.38, FICA $244.80, Arizona $60.67).

$50 an hour ($104,000 a year) → $4,000.00 gross, $3,072.95 take-home per paycheck (76.8% kept; federal $540.38, FICA $306.00, Arizona $80.67).

The share kept falls slowly as the rate rises — from about 88.3% at $12 to 76.8% at $50 — because federal brackets are progressive while FICA is flat. Every one of these rates has its own page under hourly to salary with the full 51-state table.

Shift differentials, on-call, holiday and premium pay

A shift differential — an extra dollar or two an hour for nights or weekends — is part of your regular rate for overtime purposes: if you earn $20 plus a $2 differential, overtime in those hours is paid at 1.5 × $22, not 1.5 × $20 plus $2. Payroll systems that get this wrong under-pay overtime, and it is one of the most common wage claims. Enter the differential as a second rate in the calculator, or fold it into the rate for the hours it applies to.

Holiday premium pay (double time on Thanksgiving, say) is not required by federal law; it is a matter of policy or contract, and when paid it is ordinary taxable wages — no special withholding rate, and it does not count as «qualified overtime» for the 2026 deduction unless the hours are also overtime under the FLSA. On-call pay and call-back minimums are wages in the same way. Reimbursed expenses (mileage at the IRS rate, tools) are not wages and should not appear in the taxable gross; if they do, the stub is overstating your taxable income.

Bonuses to hourly workers — a retention bonus, a productivity bonus — are supplemental wages withheld at the flat 22%, and a non-discretionary bonus must also be spread back over the weeks it covers to recompute overtime on it. The bonus tax calculator handles the withholding; the overtime recalculation is payroll's job and worth checking on the stub.

Salaried but non-exempt: overtime on a salary

Being paid a salary does not, by itself, remove overtime. A salaried employee who fails the FLSA duties tests, or who earns less than the exemption threshold, is non-exempt and owed time-and-a-half after 40 hours. The regular rate is the salary divided by the hours it is meant to cover: a $52,000 salary for a 40-hour week is $25 an hour, so an hour of overtime is $37.50. Some employers use the «fluctuating workweek» method, paying half-time rather than time-and-a-half on the basis that the salary already covers all hours; it is legal only under specific conditions and it produces a much smaller overtime premium.

For the calculator, a salaried non-exempt worker is best modelled in hourly mode: enter the equivalent rate and the actual hours, and the overtime lines and the 2026 overtime deduction come out correctly. The salary mode assumes a fixed gross per period and cannot see overtime.

Hourly W-2 work vs hourly 1099 work

The same $30 an hour is worth very different amounts as an employee and as a contractor. An employee has 7.65% withheld for FICA and the employer pays a matching 7.65%; a contractor pays both halves as self-employment tax, 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings, and gets no employer benefits, no overtime and no unemployment insurance. As a rule of thumb, a 1099 rate needs to be roughly 20 to 30 percent above the W-2 rate to leave the same net after tax and benefits, before counting the time spent on invoicing and quarterly estimated payments.

The self-employed paycheck calculator works out the W-2 equivalent of a 1099 rate and the quarterly payments that replace withholding. Note that a worker who is treated as a contractor but controlled like an employee may be misclassified, which is a wage-and-hour matter as much as a tax one.

What the employer pays on an hourly paycheck

Your take-home is not what the hour costs your employer. On the $20 example, the employer's payroll taxes on top of the $1,600.00 gross are a matching $122.40 of FICA, federal unemployment tax at 0.6% of the first $7,000 of wages in the year, and state unemployment insurance at a rate set by the state and the employer's claims history, plus workers' compensation premiums. Together they typically add 8 to 12 percent to the wage bill before benefits.

That matters when negotiating: an employer comparing a $20 hourly hire with a $24 contractor is comparing $20 plus 10 percent with $24 plus nothing, which is closer than it looks. The payroll calculator shows the employer's side line by line.

The pay-period math the calculator uses

Hours per pay period are what your employer actually counts, not an average: 80 for two weeks at 40 a week, 40 for a week. Semi-monthly pay for hourly workers is the awkward case — a half-month has no fixed number of hours, so payroll pays the hours actually worked in the period and the calculator's 86.67 default is only the annual average. Monthly hourly pay is rare but the same logic applies: 173.33 hours is the average month.

Overtime is computed by workweek regardless of the pay period. A biweekly period is two workweeks, and 45 hours in the first and 35 in the second is five hours of overtime, not zero; averaging across the period is not allowed. When you enter overtime hours in the calculator, enter the total across the workweeks in the period. Withholding then treats the whole paycheck the same way it treats a salaried one: annualised, adjusted, looked up in the 2026 withholding table for your filing status, and divided back — the diagram under the result shows each step for your figures.

Reading your hourly pay stub

An hourly stub shows the rate and the hours on separate lines — regular, overtime at 1.5×, double time, sometimes a differential — and the gross is their sum. The pay stub preview above lays the calculator's figures out the same way. Check three things against it: that the overtime hours are the hours beyond 40 in each workweek (not averaged over the pay period, which is illegal under the FLSA), that the overtime rate is 1.5× your regular rate including any differential, and that reported tips appear in earnings and again as a deduction from the cash paid.

Year-to-date columns matter more for hourly workers than they look, because the 2026 overtime and tip deductions are claimed from the year's totals on the W-2. If your stub does not separate overtime premium from regular pay, ask payroll to; the W-2 will need it.

A worked example: $45,760 in Arizona, paid every two weeks

Take $45,760 a year in Arizona, paid every two weeks (26 paychecks), single, standard W-4, no pre-tax deductions. The gross per paycheck is $1,760.00. Federal income tax withholding, from the 2026 Publication 15-T percentage method, takes $127.35. Social Security takes 6.2% of gross, $109.12, and Medicare 1.45%, $25.52. Arizona withholds $24.67 under its flat rate and deductions. The net deposit is $1,473.34, 83.7% of gross; over the year that is $38,307 from $45,760, an effective rate of 16.3% on all taxes together. Every line is reproducible from the documents on the sources page, and the table below lists them in the order they appear on a stub.

Two things on that stub are not obvious from the totals. First, the federal line is withholding, not tax: the tables annualise this paycheck as if all 26 were identical, and the year's actual tax, $3,311, differs from the $3,311 withheld by $0, which becomes a bill in April. Second, Social Security and Medicare are the same fraction of every paycheck of the year, because the salary is under the wage base, and no form can change them; only Section 125 deductions reduce their base. The reading guide walks each line and names what it should equal.

Nearby hourly rates at 80 hours per two weeks

A dollar an hour more or less changes the every two weeks paycheck by about $80.00 gross and somewhat less net. The ladder below runs the same hours at rates from $17.00 to $32.00 in Arizona; the hourly to salary converter turns any rate into a year and the hourly calculator adds overtime and tips.

Nearby salaries: what $25,760 to $80,760 leave in Arizona

A raise or a job offer is rarely at the round number on this page, so here is the ladder around it: the same every two weeks paycheck at 6 salaries from $25,760 to $80,760, single, standard W-4, no deductions. The effective rate climbs from 11.9% to 20.6% across the range because federal income tax is progressive while FICA is flat; each extra $10,000 of salary leaves less than the last, and the pay raise calculator prices any step exactly. The salary after tax pages carry the full range, one page per amount.

Reading the ladder the other way answers the interview question: to take home $10,000 more a year in Arizona takes a raise of roughly $12,594 in gross at this level, because the new dollars are taxed at the marginal rate rather than the average. The state column grows in a straight line, since Arizona charges one rate; the FICA column grows in a straight line until the wage base. The gross-up calculator runs the reverse computation for any net.

The same paycheck under each filing status

Filing status is the one W-4 line everyone fills in, and it moves the federal line more than most people expect. On $45,760 in Arizona, paid every two weeks, a single filer is withheld $127.35 per paycheck; married filing jointly (one income) $52.15, because the joint table doubles the standard deduction to $32,200 and widens every bracket; head of household $86.12, with its $24,150 deduction and its own brackets. Married filing separately uses the single table. Arizona's own deductions and brackets are the same for joint filers, which is why the state column moves too. Picking «married» with two incomes and skipping step 2 is the commonest cause of an April bill; the W-4 guide covers the choice.

The last column shows why the status matters beyond the paycheck: the year's federal income tax on $45,760 is $3,311 single and $1,356 married filing jointly on one income, a difference of $1,955 that the W-4 status either delivers through the year or holds back for a refund. Head of household is the status most often missed by single parents, who leave $1,072 a year on the single table. FICA is identical in every row, since it has no status.