Calculator
What does one employee cost you in federal payroll tax?
Three federal rates, three different bases, and no single percentage. Enter one wage and watch the caps do the work.
Enter one employee's gross wage for the year. The default is a placeholder rather than a benchmark, and the number below is not about your business until you have replaced it — which is the point, because the answer moves when the wage does.
Employer payroll tax floor
| Step | Working | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Gross wage for the year | $60,000 | $60,000 |
| Social Security — 6.2% of wages up to $184,500 | $60,000 × 0.062 | $3,720 |
| Medicare — 1.45% of all covered wages, uncapped | $60,000 × 0.0145 | $870 |
| Federal unemployment — 0.6% of the first $7,000, after the maximum state credit | $7,000 × 0.006 | $42 |
| Federal statutory minimum for the year | $3,720 + $870 + $42 | $4,632 |
| What that is as a share of this wage — and it moves when the wage does | $4,632 ÷ $60,000 | 7.72% |
This assumes
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will not include state unemployment tax, which is experience-rated and set by fifty separate authorities, so no national figure exists to put here
will apply only the three federal components the administering authority publishes rates for, and say on the page that a real employer pays a state rate on top of them
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will not include workers' compensation, which is legally required in nearly every state and is priced by state and by class of work rather than by a federal rate
will leave it out entirely rather than substitute an average, so the output is a federal floor and not a total of what law requires
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will not include insurance, retirement, paid leave or supplemental pay, none of which any statute requires an employer to provide
will stay inside what is written into federal tax law, so nothing here depends on a survey, a sample or an average of other employers
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will not assume the federal unemployment rate before the state credit, which is the larger of the two figures the authority publishes
will apply the rate after the maximum credit, which assumes state unemployment tax paid in full and on time in a state that has not been determined to be a credit reduction state — the smaller number, and the wrong one if any of that is untrue
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will not add the three rates together into one percentage of salary, which is how this figure is usually quoted
will compute each component against its own base and sum the dollars, because two of the three stop at a cap and adding rates that stop at different points produces a percentage that is true for almost nobody
IRS Tax Topic no. 751 — Social Security and Medicare withholding rates · statutory rate for the 2026 tax year, published by the administering authority · the employee pays the same rate again, and above the wage base the employer pays nothing further on that employee · verified
How to read this number.
Every number in this calculation except the wage is written into federal tax law, so unlike most things on this site there is no sample, no survey and no margin of error. What there is instead is three bases. Social Security is charged on wages up to an annual limit and nothing above it. Medicare is charged on all covered wages with no limit at all. Federal unemployment tax is charged on the first $7,000 you pay each person in the year and stops there. The rates are constants; the bases are what make the answer depend on the wage.
That is why this page is a calculator rather than a percentage. Add 6.2 and 1.45 and 0.6 together and you get a figure that is exactly right for an employee paid no more than $7,000 for the year and too high for every other employee alive. At a wage a few times that, the federal unemployment component has already flattened into a fixed forty-odd dollars while the other two keep growing, and the share of the wage starts falling. Above $184,500 the Social Security component flattens too, and the share falls faster. Type two different wages into the box and the output as a share of pay will not be the same number twice.
The result is a floor, not a total, and it is a floor in four separate directions. There is no state unemployment tax in it, because fifty authorities set that separately and by experience rating, and no national figure exists that would not be a guess. There is no workers' compensation in it, which is legally required in nearly every state and is priced by the work being done rather than by a rate anyone publishes federally. There is nothing discretionary in it — no insurance, no retirement, no leave. And the federal unemployment rate used is the one after the maximum state credit, which is the smaller of the two published and is conditional on having paid the state on time.
So the honest reading of the output is: whatever an employee costs you above the wage, it is at least this, and the gap between this and the real figure is made of things nobody publishes a national number for. That is a less satisfying answer than a multiplier, and it is the one that survives contact with a payroll. An employer who wants the whole figure can get it from their own records in an afternoon, and it will beat any national average, including the ones we publish ourselves.
One more thing about the last step. The share of the wage this produces is not a figure anyone published — it is the arithmetic run on your wage, and it exists only because you supplied one. The government publishes rates on defined bases and does not publish a share of a payroll, and that distinction is the reason the benchmark page behind this tool refuses to state one. Here it can be computed because there is a wage to compute it against, and it changes the moment the wage changes, which is the whole argument.
Questions this raises.
Why is there no state unemployment tax in this?
Because it is experience-rated. Every state sets its own rates and its own wage base, and within a state an employer's rate depends on its own history of claims. There is no national figure to put in a formula, and inventing one would be the only unsourced number on the page. It is a real cost and it is missing here, which is why the output is described as a floor.
Is the employee's half in this number?
No. This is the employer's side only. The employee pays the same Social Security and Medicare rates again out of their own pay, and there is an additional Medicare tax on high individual earnings that the employer does not match at all. None of that is an employer cost, so none of it is counted here.
Why does the percentage go down as the wage goes up?
Because two of the three components stop. Federal unemployment tax stops after the first $7,000 of a person's wages for the year, and Social Security stops at the annual wage base. Past those points the wage keeps rising and those two components do not, so the total is a smaller and smaller share of the pay. This is the mechanism that makes a single statutory percentage impossible to publish.
Where do the rates come from?
Both IRS tax topic pages, read end to end by our research engine on the day the figures were verified, with the source and its review date printed under the instrument. The rates and the bases they apply to are recorded together as sourced constants, so a change to either one stops this page building until the calculator follows it.
The systems behind the number.
- AI follow-upA written sequence of specific, useful contacts across email, text and call reminders, spaced at intervals your own history supports, personalised from what the person actually asked, and stopped the moment they reply, book or say no.
- AI operationsThe repetitive internal steps between an event and its outcome — data entry, assignment, chasing, reminding, reporting — are moved into systems that run whether or not anyone is at a desk, with a person left on every step that contains a judgement.
- Lead qualificationEvery inbound is scored on what it actually said and where it came from, before anyone reads it. High-intent enquiries route to a person with a deadline; the rest enter a sequence that keeps them warm without spending anybody's morning. The rules are written in plain English and versioned when they change.
- Lead recoveryEvery inbound — form, call, chat, portal — lands in one queue with a timestamp on it, receives an immediate acknowledgement that names what was asked, and is routed to a named person with a deadline attached. Nothing is marked handled until a reply exists.
- Marketing automationThe material a buyer needs in order to decide is published where they are already looking, delivered on request, and the request is recorded against the person. The automation's job is delivery and memory, not pursuit.
The other calculators.
- What running it yourself already costs you each monthRetainer vs DIY stack
- What a business your size typically spends on marketingMarketing budget benchmark
- What the enquiries nobody answered are costing youMissed lead revenue
An estimate built from your own guesses is a starting position, not a baseline. The audit measures the same figures in your business instead of asking you for them.
METHOD
Every figure below carries its source and the date it was verified. Nothing on this page is asserted.
The numbers on this page.
| What | Value | Specific to |
|---|---|---|
| Social Security — the employer's rate, and the wage base it stops at | 6.2% up to $184,500 | This page |
| Medicare — the employer's rate, on all covered wages, with no wage base limit | 1.45% | This page |
| Federal unemployment — the rate after the maximum state credit, and the per-employee base it stops at | 0.6% up to $7,000 | This page |
IRS Tax Topic no. 751 — Social Security and Medicare withholding rates · statutory rate for the 2026 tax year, published by the administering authority · the additional Medicare tax on high individual earnings has no employer match, so it is not an employer cost at all · verified
IRS Tax Topic no. 759 — Form 940, Employer's Annual Federal Unemployment (FUTA) Tax Return · statutory rate for the 2026 tax year, published by the administering authority, after the maximum credit for state unemployment tax paid in full and on time · the published rate before the credit is much higher, and a credit reduction state reduces it · verified
What is specific to this page.
| Kind | Claim | Check it against |
|---|---|---|
| Regulation | The federal unemployment component is bounded per employee rather than proportional to pay: it applies only to the first wages of the year for each person, so an employer's liability for it is set by headcount and not by payroll. | The IRS tax topic for federal unemployment tax, which states the rate and the per-employee wage base the tax applies to, and the annual federal unemployment tax return it is reported on. |
| Constraint | The lower federal unemployment rate is conditional and can be lost: it requires state unemployment tax paid in full and on time on the same wages, in a state that has not been determined to be a credit reduction state, and the authority republishes that list every year. | The credit reduction state list the IRS publishes annually alongside the federal unemployment tax return instructions. |
Each row would be wrong on another industry's page. Where a sourced figure exists it is in the table above instead; these are the constraints that shape the work and do not happen to be numbers.
Start with the measurement.
Reading about a benchmark is not the same as knowing your own number. The audit produces yours, measured rather than estimated.
$497 · delivered in 5 business days · credited against month one