Calculator
Your bonus was not taxed at a higher rate.
A bonus is ordinary pay. It is taxed exactly like the last dollars of your salary — no special rate, no penalty for it being a bonus. On a $75,000.00 salary in Ohio, a $5,000.00 bonus adds $1,620.00 of tax and leaves you $3,380.00. What lands in your account is usually less than that — and that gap is not tax.
Supplemental wages are ordinary income assessed at the recipient's marginal rate, not at a distinct schedule. The gap readers observe is a withholding artifact: employers may withhold supplemental payments at a flat statutory rate rather than against the employee's own withholding certificate, so the amount deducted commonly exceeds the liability and settles at filing. In Ohio, at the reference figures, the true incremental charge is $1,620, a retained share of about 67.6%.
What the bonus really cost
enter your stubA bonus is not taxed at a special rate. It is ordinary income, taxed at the same marginal rate as the last dollars of your salary — which is what the first figure shows. What your employer takes off is withholding, which is a prepayment and often larger than the tax.
Most employers withhold federal tax on a bonus at a single flat rate rather than working it out from your salary, which is where the figure above comes from. Payroll and state tax come off on top of it. When your stub arrives, enter what was actually taken — some employers bundle a bonus into a normal paycheck instead, and then the flat rate never applied at all.
Single filer, and the bonus stacked on top of that salary. Your return also carries any other income, credits and payments, so this is the bonus's own effect rather than a refund forecast.
Bigger bonuses, same rule
The share you keep falls a little as the bonus grows, because a large enough bonus pushes some of itself into the next bracket. That is the only sense in which a bigger bonus is taxed harder — and it applies to the part above the line, never to the whole.
Federal and payroll tax only, on a $75,000 base. The declining retained share reflects bracket traversal within the increment, not a different rate applied to it.
| Bonus | Tax it adds | You keep | Share kept |
|---|---|---|---|
| $1,000 | $297 | $704 | about 70.35% |
| $2,500 | $741 | $1,759 | about 70.35% |
| $5,000 | $1,483 | $3,518 | about 70.35% |
| $10,000 | $2,965 | $7,035 | about 70.35% |
| $25,000 | $7,413 | $17,588 | about 70.35% |
Your two tax rates
A $75,000 Texas salary
- Next dollar29.65%
- All your pay17.88%
| On the next dollar | 29.65% |
|---|---|
| Across all your pay | 17.88% |
| The gap | 11.77% |
| Tax this year | $13,408 |
The outer ring shows tax on your next dollar. The inner ring shows tax as a share of all your pay.
Your next $1,000
A $75,000 Texas salary
| Federal, on the next dollar | 22% |
|---|---|
| Social Security and Medicare | 7.65% |
| State, on the next dollar | 0% |
| Taken from the next $1,000 | $297 |
Rates shown are federal, Social Security and Medicare, and state. Any local tax is inside the kept amount.
The same bonus, in every state
A $5,000.00 bonus leaves you $3,518 $3,517.50 in Alaska and $3,080.00 in Oregon. The federal part is identical everywhere; the rest is your state.
Retained amount by state at the reference salary and bonus, including state and any modeled local income tax. The spread is entirely a state effect.
| State | You keep |
|---|---|
| Alaska | $3,518 |
| Florida | $3,518 |
| Nevada | $3,518 |
| New Hampshire | $3,518 |
| South Dakota | $3,518 |
| Tennessee | $3,518 |
| Texas | $3,518 |
| Washington | $3,518 |
| Wyoming | $3,518 |
| North Dakota | $3,420 |
| Arizona | $3,393 |
| Ohio | $3,380 |
| Indiana | $3,370 |
| Louisiana | $3,368 |
| Pennsylvania | $3,364 |
| Kentucky | $3,343 |
| Arkansas | $3,333 |
| Rhode Island | $3,330 |
| Iowa | $3,328 |
| Alabama | $3,323 |
| North Carolina | $3,318 |
| Mississippi | $3,318 |
| Michigan | $3,305 |
| Colorado | $3,298 |
| Utah | $3,295 |
| Oklahoma | $3,293 |
| Nebraska | $3,290 |
| West Virginia | $3,289 |
| Missouri | $3,283 |
| New Mexico | $3,283 |
| Maryland | $3,280 |
| Illinois | $3,270 |
| Georgia | $3,268 |
| Massachusetts | $3,268 |
| Idaho | $3,253 |
| New York | $3,248 |
| Connecticut | $3,243 |
| Kansas | $3,239 |
| Montana | $3,235 |
| Virginia | $3,230 |
| Wisconsin | $3,221 |
| New Jersey | $3,207 |
| Delaware | $3,188 |
| Vermont | $3,188 |
| South Carolina | $3,186 |
| Maine | $3,180 |
| Minnesota | $3,178 |
| Hawaii | $3,138 |
| District of Columbia | $3,115 |
| California | $3,097 |
| Oregon | $3,080 |
Single filer. The amount your employer deducts is withholding, not tax; this site does not model the statutory supplemental withholding rate, so the tool above asks for the figure from your own pay stub instead.