About TotalTaxRate.com

What This Site Does

TotalTaxRate.com is a free, educational financial modeling tool built to answer one question that most calculators ignore: what percentage of your income actually goes to taxes when you count everything?

Most "take-home pay" calculators stop at federal income tax. Some include state income tax. Almost none account for the full picture — and that missing picture is often worth thousands of dollars a year.

This calculator integrates all six major layers of the U.S. tax system:

• Federal income tax — using current IRS brackets and standard deductions for 2025 and 2026
• Payroll taxes — employee Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%), including the 0.9% additional Medicare tax for high earners
• State income tax — covering all 50 states plus the District of Columbia, including the nine states with no income tax
• Property tax — estimated using market value, state assessment ratios, and average mill levy rates by state
• Sales tax — combining state and local averages by ZIP code or state fallback
• Vehicle registration taxes — modeled by state, including flat-fee states, value-based states, and age-based tiered structures

The result is a single, bottom-line number: your Total Effective Tax Rate. Not your bracket. Your actual rate.

Who Built This — and Why

My name is Kyle Goodrich. I am an engineer with a background in mechanical design and a long-standing interest in personal finance and tax policy. I built TotalTaxRate.com because I kept running into the same frustrating problem: no single tool told me what I actually wanted to know.

A few years ago, I was comparing job offers in different states and trying to figure out whether moving from a state with income tax to a "no income tax" state would actually save me money after accounting for property taxes and cost of living. Every calculator I found gave me a partial answer. I had to pull together data from four or five different sources and do the math by hand.

I also noticed that a lot of people — including smart, financially literate people — believe they're in the "22% tax bracket" and treat that as their tax rate. In reality, for someone making $80,000 with a standard deduction, contributions to a 401(k), and a moderate property tax bill, the real all-in effective rate is often 28–33%. Understanding that gap changes how you think about saving, spending, and planning.

TotalTaxRate.com is my answer to that problem. It is designed to be transparent, educational, and accurate for the typical American household — not a substitute for a CPA, but a starting point for understanding your real tax burden before you ever sit down with one.

Who This Is For

• Job seekers and career changers comparing salary offers across different states, trying to understand true take-home pay rather than just gross compensation.
• Homebuyers and movers evaluating the full cost of living in a new location, including property tax burdens that often dwarf state income tax differences.
• W-2 employees with side income trying to understand how 1099 income, self-employment tax, and deductions interact with their regular paycheck.
• Retirees and near-retirees modeling their tax situation in retirement across different states, where property and sales taxes often matter more than income tax rates.
• Financial planners and advisors who want a quick, client-facing tool for showing the full picture before diving into detailed tax planning.
• Anyone curious about where their money actually goes. Most Americans have never seen this number. Seeing it for the first time tends to be memorable.

How the Estimates Are Calculated

This tool uses publicly available data from the IRS, state revenue departments, the Tax Foundation, and local government sources to build its estimates. Here is a brief overview of the methodology for each tax type:

• Federal income tax: Calculated using the current year's official IRS tax brackets and standard deductions (2025 and 2026), applied progressively to taxable income after standard or itemized deductions, pre-tax contributions, and applicable tax credits.
• State income tax: Uses effective flat or average marginal rates for each state. Because state tax systems vary widely — some are flat, some are progressive, some have local surcharges — this is a representative estimate rather than a precise filing calculation.
• Payroll taxes: Applied at the statutory employee rates. Self-employment income is treated separately with the full 15.3% SE tax rate, including the 50% deduction for the employer portion.
• Property tax: Estimated using the home's market value multiplied by the state's residential assessment ratio, then multiplied by the average effective property tax rate for that state. Individual rates can vary significantly by county, city, and school district, so this is a statewide average.
• Sales tax: Uses combined state and local averages by ZIP code where available, with statewide averages as a fallback. Applied to user-provided annual spending estimates.
• Vehicle registration: Modeled by state using flat-fee, value-based, age-tiered, or weight-based rules depending on each state's system.

Contact

Questions, feedback, or corrections? I genuinely want to hear from you — especially if you have spotted an error in the data or have a suggestion for improving the calculator. You can reach me through the contact page.

If you find this tool useful, the best thing you can do is share it with someone who is trying to understand their taxes, compare states, or make a better-informed financial decision.