California Paycheck Calculator

State Disability Insurance. It funds short-term disability and Paid Family Leave, it is withheld from the employee, and it is not income tax. It does not go through brackets, deductions or credits. It takes 1.3% of every dollar you earn, which on a $75,000 salary is $975.00 a year.

No. The California EDD states that since 1 January 2024 all wages are subject to SDI contributions, so there is no ceiling at any salary. Older guidance and some other calculators still show the earlier wage cap.

The EDD lists four state payroll taxes. Two are withheld from your wages: Personal Income Tax and SDI. Two are paid by your employer: Unemployment Insurance and the Employment Training Tax. Those two are an employer cost and do not come out of your pay, so only two of the four reduce your take-home pay.

This calculator uses the method a payroll system uses: the EDD’s 2026 Method B withholding schedule, 1.1% to 14.63%. It takes California’s own standard deduction off your wages, applies the rates to what is left, then subtracts a credit for each allowance, a credit that comes off the tax itself, not off your income. On $75,000 filing single that is $3,052.03 a year, about 4.1% of gross. On $250,000 it is $20,905.48, or 8.4%, so the rate climbs steeply because the schedule is genuinely progressive. Your actual tax for the year is settled on your return, and it can differ from what was withheld.

Yes, on both the federal and the state line. The same $75,000 salary paid biweekly nets $2,214.06 filing single and $2,407.14 filing married jointly, a difference of $193.08 a paycheck, from the wider brackets and larger deductions that status brings. SDI does not change: it is a flat rate on wages regardless of how you file.

California still uses its own DE 4 form, which is separate from the federal W-4. Allowances were dropped from the federal form in 2020, and the EDD says new hires and anyone changing their withholding must submit both forms. Employers withhold California tax with either the EDD’s Method A wage bracket tables or its Method B exact calculation, which takes a standard deduction, applies rates to the rest and subtracts a credit for each allowance. This calculator follows Method B and assumes the usual allowances: one for a single employee, two for a married employee and one for an unmarried head of household. Extra allowances for estimated deductions are not modelled.

The EDD tells employers that if an employee does not give them a properly completed DE 4, they must withhold California income tax as if the employee were single and claiming zero allowances. If you have never filled one in, that is worth asking your payroll department about.

Yes. The EDD’s 2026 Method B schedules include a low income exemption: no California income tax is withheld when biweekly wages are $727 or less for a single employee, or a married employee claiming 0 or 1 allowances. For a married employee claiming 2 or more allowances, or an unmarried head of household, the limit is $1,454. The tables set the same kind of limit for other pay periods.

At least twice in each calendar month, on paydays the employer sets in advance, according to the Labor Commissioner’s Office. For pay periods other than the 1st to the 15th and the 16th to the end of the month, which includes weekly and biweekly pay, wages are due within seven calendar days after the pay period ends. Overtime wages are due on the payday for the next regular payroll period.

If you are fired or laid off, all wages, including accrued vacation, are due immediately. If you quit with at least 72 hours’ notice, they are due on your last day. If you quit without that notice, they are due within 72 hours. Different rules apply to some groups, such as seasonal cannery workers, motion picture workers and workers under certain union agreements. An employer that willfully pays late can owe a waiting time penalty of one day’s pay for each day wages stay unpaid, up to 30 days.

California counts overtime per day as well as per week. For most non-exempt employees, hours beyond 8 in a workday and beyond 40 in a workweek are paid at one and a half times the regular rate. Hours beyond 12 in a workday are paid at double the regular rate, and so is anything past 8 hours on the seventh consecutive day of a workweek. The first 8 hours on that seventh day are paid at one and a half times.

On $75,000 paid biweekly, a Texas worker nets $2,368.94 and a California worker $2,214.06. That is $154.89 more per paycheck in Texas, or $4,027 a year. Almost all of that gap is the two lines Texas does not have: California PIT and SDI. Federal tax and FICA are identical in both.