Guide
Being "in the 22% bracket" does not mean 22% of your income goes to federal tax. Here is the difference, with 2026 numbers.
People use "tax bracket" to mean two different things, and the confusion costs real money. When someone turns down overtime because it will "push them into the next bracket," they are treating the bracket as if it applied to their whole income. It doesn't. Only the dollars above the threshold are taxed at the higher rate.
Your marginal rate is the rate on your next dollar of income. Your effective rate is your total tax divided by your total income. They are almost never the same number, and the gap between them is usually large.
A single filer earning $75,000 in 2026 is "in the 22% bracket." Their federal income tax is about $7,670 — an effective rate of 10.2%. The 22% applies to roughly $8,500 of their income, not to $75,000.
Start with gross pay. Subtract the standard deduction — $16,100 for a single filer in 2026. What is left is taxable income, and that is the number the brackets apply to. The brackets then fill like a set of buckets: the first $12,400 of taxable income is taxed at 10%, the next slice at 12%, and so on. Nothing retroactively re-taxes the money below.
| Taxable income (single) | Rate on that slice |
|---|---|
| $0 – $12,400 | 10% |
| $12,400 – $50,400 | 12% |
| $50,400 – $105,700 | 22% |
| $105,700 – $201,775 | 24% |
| $201,775 – $256,225 | 32% |
| $256,225 – $640,600 | 35% |
| $640,600 and up | 37% |
2026 rates for single filers. Married-filing-jointly thresholds are roughly double at the low end and diverge higher up.
Here is the same single filer at six salary levels, taking the standard deduction and no other adjustments. The last column adds Social Security and Medicare, which is what most people actually feel.
| Salary | Federal income tax | Marginal | Effective (income tax) | Effective (with FICA) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $45,000 | $3,220 | 12% | 7.2% | 14.8% |
| $60,000 | $5,020 | 12% | 8.4% | 16.0% |
| $75,000 | $7,670 | 22% | 10.2% | 17.9% |
| $100,000 | $13,170 | 22% | 13.2% | 20.8% |
| $120,000 | $17,570 | 22% | 14.6% | 22.3% |
| $250,000 | $51,304 | 32% | 20.5% | 26.7% |
Single filer, standard deduction, 2026 rates. Excludes state income tax and any credits.
At $120,000 the marginal rate is 22% but the effective rate is 14.6% — the marginal rate overstates the bite by more than seven points. At $250,000 the gap is wider still: 32% marginal against 20.5% effective.
Crossing a bracket threshold cannot reduce your take-home pay. Suppose our single filer sits at $66,400 of taxable income and gets a $2,000 raise that carries them past a threshold partway. The dollars below the line are still taxed at the lower rate; only the amount above it is taxed higher. Worst case they keep 78 cents of each new dollar instead of 88. They still end up with more money than before.
The real cliffs are elsewhere. Brackets are smooth. What is not smooth: income-based subsidy phase-outs, the child tax credit phase-out that starts at $200,000 (single) or $400,000 (joint), and needs-tested benefits. Those can genuinely claw back more than a dollar per extra dollar. Tax brackets never do.
Use the marginal rate for forward-looking decisions: whether to take overtime, what a bonus will net, how much a dollar into a traditional 401(k) saves you today. Use the effective rate for backward-looking questions: what share of last year's income went to tax, or how two job offers in different states really compare.
One wrinkle worth knowing: your marginal rate on wages is not just the income-tax bracket. Add 7.65% for Social Security and Medicare below the $184,500 Social Security wage cap, and 1.45% above it. A single filer in the 22% bracket is really losing about 29.65 cents of each extra dollar to federal taxes, before any state tax.
The take-home pay calculator shows both rates for your salary, filing status and state. FICA in 2026 covers the payroll-tax layer, and bonus withholding explains why a bonus check looks worse than either rate suggests.