Salary Calculation - quick question
 

Trying to work out our combined net salary each month given mine and my wife's gross annual salaries. Assume we are filing married, joint with 0 dependents. If i use a salary calculator and select married, joint for my salary, then the same with my wife's, and add net amounts together, we end up paying too little tax as we are both getting the married allowance and tax rate cut offs. But if i do our combined salaries as one, then we only pay one person's SS, medicare etc, so that doesn't work either. Should i just do 'single' for both?
thanks

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

I would invest in a CPA or some tax software, Taxact is free. If you filling joint you send one return, if filing separately you file 2 returns.

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

What are you trying to do? .... Calculate withholding for 2016, or pre-arrival planning?

I think my employer's withholding calculator works best if I put in figures for married, and add them to figures put in for my wife filing singly.

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

Thanks both. No, I can do the returns using turbo tax, and it's not pre-arrival - we have been here 4 yrs. I am trying to figure out what our household take home will be after proposed pay rises this year. I am not sure that one salary on married, joint and one on single will give the correct answer either

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

An easier way may be to look at the tax tables, see what tax bracket you fall into, look at last years return to give you a start, then work out what percentage of tax you will be paying. They are some caveats because at certain thresholds you can lose benefits.

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

If you're just looking for increments, I'd take the net of the gross increases reduced by your marginal tax rate. So $10,000 reduced by say 28% federal tax and 6% state tax would give $6,600 net increase, plus any other flat percentage deductions.

Tip: look at your before and after net pay per pay cycle, and see what an $X increase does to your net take home, then you can use that to estimate the impact of future increases. I noticed a number of years ago that for every $5,000 increase in pay I get about $110 extra take-home per pay cycle.

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

I wish I only paid 6% State income tax :(

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

I don't even pay that much. :lol: ..... I wish I paid 0% sales tax though. :(

Re: Salary Calculation - quick question
 

Ok, how about this:put my salary into salary calculator, file as single. Make a note of SS and medicare. Repeat with wife's salary. Now put joint salary into calculator, file as married joint. Make note of federal tax and state tax, add on combined SS and medicare numbers from before to get total. Deduct from gross combined salaries to get combined net salary. Simple as that. Will it work? Seems to work for last years numbers...