Effective Tax Rate Calculator

About this calculator

Your effective tax rate is total tax paid divided by total income, expressed as a percentage — the real average share of every dollar you earned that went to tax, as opposed to your marginal rate, which is just the rate on your last dollar of income.

Because progressive tax systems apply higher rates only to income above each bracket threshold, your effective rate is almost always lower than your top marginal bracket. Accountants and personal-finance writers use it to compare tax burdens across incomes and countries, and it's the number that actually tells you what fraction of your paycheck taxes really took.