What your next raise really costs, including lost benefits.
Open the Marginal Reality Rate tool →The Marginal Rate Explorer adds up federal income tax, FICA, and state tax on your next dollars. This tile adds the part that's usually left out: what happens to your benefits at the same time.
We evaluate your whole position twice, at your current income and again after the raise, and report the difference split into its two halves, the tax you pay and the benefits you lose. The combined rate can exceed 100%, and we show it that way rather than tidying it up. A household that keeps none of its next $1,000 deserves to see exactly that.
What this leaves out is listed under every result, and it matters: housing assistance, childcare subsidies, WIC, LIHEAP, TANF, and state-only programs are not modeled here, and several of them have steeper cliffs than anything that is. Losing Medicaid is shown as a change in eligibility, never as a dollar amount, because we cannot price your coverage from public data and a made-up number would be worse than none.
This is an estimate from public data and the figures you enter, not an eligibility determination. Only the agency that runs a program decides who qualifies.
Computed entirely on your device for U.S. taxes and benefits. Nothing is ever sent anywhere, and it is free forever. Educational information, not financial, tax, investment, or legal advice.