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2026 federal paycheck workbench

Federal take-home pay calculator

Turn GS or entered gross pay into an auditable biweekly estimate. Federal withholding, FICA, retirement, TSP, FEHB, and every manual deduction remain visible from gross to spendable pay.

Private, browser-only calculation

Build one federal paycheck

Gross pay source

Gross pay

Build an ordinary 80-hour biweekly check. Scheduled salary is never divided by 26 or 27.

This changes only the calendar simulation. IRS biweekly withholding always uses 26.

Leave blank only when the full gross check is retirement creditable. Use payroll's current amount when premium pay differs.

Federal income-tax withholding

Federal withholding

Use the current Form W-4 worksheet or copy the exact Federal withholding from a legacy or payroll-specific LES.

Payroll tax and retirement coverage

Payroll tax and retirement

Copy coverage from the LES or SF-50. Hire date alone cannot determine the correct retirement deduction.

TSP and pretax benefits

TSP and benefits

Enter employee deductions for this check. Agency TSP contributions never reduce take-home pay.

Reduces Federal income-tax wages, but not Social Security or Medicare wages. Enter 0 if none.

Reduces cash only. Enter 0 if none.

A confirmed pretax payroll deduction. Enter 0 if none.

Enter the employee amount for this check, or 0.

Copy the current employee deduction from the LES. Enter 0 if none.

State, local, and other after-tax deductions

Other paycheck deductions

State and local amounts are copied from payroll; this page does not infer jurisdiction or tax law.

Enter the current amount, including 0 when none.

Enter the current amount, including 0 when none.

Union dues, allotments, garnishments, or other current cash deductions. Enter 0 if none.

Year-to-date threshold context

Year-to-date context

Threshold crossings require the current employer's payroll ledger. Use the approximation only early in the year.

Withholding estimate only—not final tax liability, payroll certification, or a W-4 recommendation.

Paycheck worksheet

Account for every dollar between gross pay and spendable cash.

The result keeps Federal income-tax, Social Security, Medicare, and retirement wage bases separate. Nothing consequential is inferred from job title, hire date, or a missing field.

  1. 01Choose OPM GS pay, scheduled annual pay, or an exact LES gross.
  2. 02Confirm tax coverage, W-4 treatment, and benefit deductions.
  3. 03Reconcile the current check and a constant-pay calendar scenario.

Calculations stay in this browser. This page makes no payroll, IRS, OPM, tax-provider, or FedUp data-platform request.

Method

One paycheck, four ledgers

Take-home pay cannot be reconstructed responsibly from one salary and one combined deduction rate. The model keeps gross cash, federal income-tax wages, FICA wages, and retirement-covered basic pay separate before reconciling the final check.

  1. 01

    Establish gross cash

    Choose an exact 2026 OPM GS table cell, enter an annual scheduled rate, or copy the exact current gross from an LES. Scheduled annual pay follows OPM's 2,087-hour conversion; it is not divided by 26.

  2. 02

    Build each wage base

    Federal income-tax wages, Social Security and Medicare wages, and retirement-covered basic pay stay separate. Traditional TSP and confirmed pre-tax benefits affect only the ledgers the governing rules allow.

  3. 03

    Apply current payroll rules

    Current Form W-4 inputs use the 2026 IRS Publication 15-T biweekly method. Social Security, Medicare, Additional Medicare, and the selected retirement coverage are calculated independently.

  4. 04

    Reconcile spendable pay

    Every tax, benefit, and user-entered deduction appears once in the gross-to-net ledger. A separate calendar view simulates constant checks instead of multiplying through annual threshold crossings.

Gross-to-net rule map

A deduction can change cash without changing every tax base

That distinction is why the page asks whether premium conversion or section 125 treatment actually applies. The labels below describe this model's current regular-pay scope; an LES remains the source of truth for actual payroll.

Scroll sideways to review every ledger column.

LedgerWhat changes it
Gross cashExact current gross or ordinary 80-hour pay from the OPM scheduled hourly rule.
Federal income-tax wagesGross less Traditional TSP and confirmed pre-tax FEHB, FSAFEDS, and section 125 HSA deductions.
Social Security and Medicare wagesGross less confirmed pre-tax FEHB, FSAFEDS, and section 125 HSA—but not Traditional or Roth TSP.
Retirement-covered basic payA separate LES/SF-50-based amount that is never reduced by TSP, FEHB, FSA, or HSA deductions.
Spendable estimateGross less each modeled tax, retirement contribution, benefit premium, and manual cash deduction exactly once.

Included

What the workbench can model

  • Exact 2026 OPM GS locality, grade, and step pay or a user-entered pay source
  • Current Form W-4 Steps 2(c), 3, 4(a), 4(b), and 4(c), plus an exempt confirmation
  • Manual federal withholding for a legacy W-4 or an exact payroll result
  • 2026 Social Security, Medicare, and Additional Medicare employee withholding
  • Regular and special FERS, FERS-RAE, FERS-FRAE, CSRS, and CSRS Offset presets
  • Separate Traditional and Roth TSP paycheck deductions
  • Exact employee premiums for 396 validated 2026 FEHB enrollment codes
  • FSAFEDS, section 125 or after-tax HSA treatment, FEGLI, state/local withholding, and other deductions
  • Exact or visibly approximated year-to-date threshold context, a constant-pay calendar simulation, and CSV export

Excluded

Where the estimate stops

  • A final federal income-tax return, refund, balance due, bracket recommendation, or Form W-4 recommendation
  • Automatic state or local income-tax calculations; enter the current pay-period withholding from payroll
  • A payroll certification, LES replacement, agency retirement-coverage determination, or benefits eligibility decision
  • Legacy Form W-4 computation, nonresident-alien adjustments, supplemental-wage methods, bonuses, awards, or irregular payroll
  • Agency TSP automatic or matching contributions, because they do not reduce the employee's paycheck
  • The constant-pay calendar projection repeats each entered Traditional TSP, Roth TSP, FSAFEDS, and HSA paycheck deduction on every selected pay date and does not enforce annual plan, tax, or legal contribution limits.
  • Overtime, Sunday, holiday, night, danger, post, retained-pay, special-rate, part-time, or unpaid-leave reconstruction
  • A guarantee of the next direct deposit, tax advice, financial advice, or legal advice

Primary sources

OPM and IRS rules, versioned locally

The calculator uses reviewed 2026 federal rules and local OPM snapshots rather than a runtime tax vendor. The compact FEHB file contains 396 validated enrollment codes and exact employee biweekly premiums; it was checked 2026-07-22.

Rule set last reviewed 2026-07-22. Recheck after a withholding, wage-base, retirement-rate, GS, or FEHB update.

IRS Form W-4 (current)The current employee form provides the filed Steps 2(c), 3, 4(a), 4(b), 4(c), and exempt-election inputs. This page reads those user-entered values; it does not prepare or recommend a Form W-4.IRS Publication 15-T (2026)Current Form W-4 Worksheet 1A and the six annual percentage-method withholding schedules used for regular biweekly pay.IRS Publication 15Employer withholding guidance for Social Security, Medicare, Additional Medicare, and regular payroll.IRS Publication 15-BFederal fringe-benefit and cafeteria-plan tax-treatment guidance. The calculator applies pre-tax FSA or HSA treatment only from the user's confirmed payroll treatment; it does not determine eligibility or annual limits.SSA 2026 contribution and benefit baseThe official 2026 Social Security wage base used to stop employee OASDI withholding at the annual limit.OPM 2,087-hour divisorScheduled annual rates are converted to a rounded hourly rate, then an ordinary 80-hour paycheck—not divided by 26 or 27.OPM retirement contribution ratesEmployee contribution rates for regular and special FERS, FERS-RAE, and FERS-FRAE coverage.OPM CSRS/FERS Handbook Chapter 30CSRS, CSRS Offset, and retirement-deduction rules. The user's LES or SF-50 remains authoritative for coverage.IRS retirement contribution withholding FAQTraditional employee deferrals reduce federal income-tax wages but not Social Security or Medicare wages.OPM 2026 FEHB public-use fileThe dated official workbook normalized into this page's 396-enrollment-code local premium snapshot.OPM FEHB premium conversionFEHB premiums can reduce federal income-tax and FICA wages when premium conversion applies.

Questions

Federal take-home pay calculator FAQs

How does the GS take-home pay calculator find biweekly gross pay?

For an exact OPM GS selection, it uses the official hourly rate for the selected 2026 table, grade, and step and multiplies it by 80 hours. For a manual annual scheduled rate, it divides by 2,087, rounds the hourly rate to cents, and multiplies by 80. It does not divide annual scheduled pay by 26.

Is this federal take-home pay estimate the same as my next direct deposit?

No. It is a planning estimate for one regular biweekly paycheck. Payroll timing, agency-specific deductions, premium pay, prior corrections, leave without pay, state or local rules, and facts not entered here can change an actual LES or deposit.

Does the calculator determine my final federal tax or refund?

No. Publication 15-T estimates employer withholding from the W-4 and paycheck facts entered. Final income tax, credits, deductions, other income, payments, and any refund or balance due are determined separately on the tax return.

Why are Traditional and Roth TSP deductions treated differently?

Traditional TSP employee contributions generally reduce current federal income-tax wages but not Social Security or Medicare wages. Roth TSP contributions reduce spendable cash but do not reduce those current tax bases.

Are FEHB premiums always pre-tax?

No. The calculator reduces federal income-tax, Social Security, and Medicare wages only when the user confirms that OPM premium conversion applies. Otherwise the FEHB premium remains a cash deduction without that modeled tax-base reduction.

Why does the calculator ask for year-to-date wages?

Social Security has an annual wage base and Additional Medicare withholding begins when one employer's paid wages cross its payroll threshold. Exact current-employer year-to-date values let the model tax only the current paycheck slice that remains subject to each rule.

Does a 27-pay-date year change current biweekly withholding?

No. A regular biweekly paycheck still uses the 26-period Publication 15-T annualization method. Selecting 27 pay dates changes only the separate constant-pay calendar simulation.

Does FedUp send my pay or tax entries to a data platform?

No. The calculation runs in the browser using reviewed local rules and the local 2026 OPM GS and FEHB snapshots. It makes no payroll, IRS, OPM, tax-provider, or FedUp data-platform request and does not need personal-data ingestion.

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