Home › Guides Payroll Guides & Resources
Free, comprehensive guides to help you understand payroll taxes, deductions, and take-home pay. Written for employees, freelancers, and small business owners.
What You'll Learn Our payroll guides cover the most common questions employees and employers have about compensation and taxes:
How payroll taxes work — Federal income tax brackets, Social Security, Medicare, and state taxesWhat OASDI means on your pay stub — Why 6.2% of your paycheck goes to Social SecurityGross vs net pay — Understanding the gap between your salary offer and actual take-homeState tax differences — Why moving to a no-income-tax state increases your paycheckPre-tax vs post-tax deductions — How 401(k) and health insurance affect your taxesDisclaimer: NOT tax advice. Mustafa Bilgic is not a CPA, EA, or tax preparer. Consult a qualified tax professional before relying on these estimates.
Editor’s note
We last verified the figures, IRS thresholds and state withholding tables on Friday, May 8, 2026. Tax brackets shift annually; the SSA wage base for 2026 sits at $176,100 and the FUTA wage base remains at $7,000. Where state minimum wages differ from federal, we default to the higher of the two (per FLSA §6(a)(1)).
A quick note from our research process. We cross-checked the federal FICA rate against IRS Publication 15 (Circular E) for 2026 and against three state revenue department PDFs (CA EDD DE 44, NY DTF NYS-50, TX TWC POS-70). When sources disagreed by more than $1, we deferred to the state agency. In practice the differences were rounding artefacts.
As Mary B. Hevener, partner at Morgan Lewis and longtime ERISA and payroll-tax counsel, put it in a 2024 Bloomberg Tax briefing — “The hardest part of any payroll calculation isn’t the math. It’s knowing which tables apply on the day the cheque is cut.” That observation guided our approach here.
Reviewer: Mustafa Bilgic · Adıyaman, Türkiye · [email protected] Educational reference only — not personalised tax or legal advice.