How Can I Calculate Taxes From My Weekly Paycheck?
- 1). Multiply your weekly paycheck amount by the current Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA) tax rate, which includes both the Social Security tax and the Medicare tax. As of 2010, the FICA tax rate for employees is 7.65 percent, so if your weekly income is $1,300, you would multiply $1,300 by 0.0765 to calculate the amount withheld for payroll taxes would be $99.45.
- 2). Multiply the number of allowances you claimed on your W-4 form by the weekly value of each allowance, which can be found in Internal Revenue Service Publication 15. If you are unsure of how many allowances you claimed, ask your employer for a copy of your W-4 form. For 2010, the value is $39.42, so if you claimed one allowance, you would multiply $39.42 by 1 to get $39.42.
- 3). Subtract the value of your allowances from your pretax weekly income. In this example, you would subtract $39.42 from $1,300 to find that $1,260.58 is subject to federal income tax withholding.
- 4). Use the federal income tax withholding tables found in IRS Publication 15 to calculate the amount of money that will be withheld for federal income taxes. Which weekly withholding table you use depends on whether you are single or married. In this example, if you were single, you would use the single weekly withholding table to find that you would have $224.25 withheld for federal income taxes.
- 5). Contact your state and local government departments of taxation to find the tax withholding tables, if applicable. Some states and localities do not have income taxes and if this is the case, you will not have any additional money withheld.
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