Texas is one of the handful of states with no personal income tax at all, so a Texas paycheck loses money to exactly three things: federal income tax, Social Security, and Medicare. This calculator itemizes all three for tax year 2026, shows your effective rate, and cites its sources — free, no signup, calculated entirely in your browser.
How to use it
- Enter your annual gross salary — or switch Pay type to Hourly for a rate × hours estimate.
- Pick your filing status — single, or married filing jointly.
- Texas is preselected in the state menu, contributing a clean $0 row.
- Choose your pay frequency; the headline figure is your per-check net.
No income tax — written into the constitution
Texas doesn’t just happen to lack an income tax; a 2019 constitutional amendment (Proposition 4) requires two-thirds of the legislature plus a statewide vote to ever create one. For your paycheck this means the state row in the breakdown is $0 at every salary, and there are no municipal wage taxes either — unlike, say, New York City or Philadelphia. A salary calculates identically in Houston, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, or El Paso; no Texas city adds its own cut. The practical effect compounds with income: a single filer keeps about $1,800 more per year than in California at $60,000, but over $40,000 more at a $500,000 salary, which is why relocations and remote-work negotiations so often use the state line as leverage. Compare the identical salary in California to see the spread for your own number.
What this means for your W-4 and side income
With no state return to file, Texas workers only ever manage one withholding document: the federal W-4. That simplifies life in ways that show up beyond the paycheck — freelance and 1099 side income needs only federal quarterly estimates, RSU vesting events trigger no state bill, and moving within Texas never changes your take-home pay the way crossing a city line can in Ohio or Pennsylvania. Note that businesses aren’t entirely off the hook: Texas levies a franchise tax on company revenue above roughly $2.47 million, which is one of the ways the state replaces the personal income tax it never charges employees.
Where Texas gets its money instead
The honest counterweight: Texas funds itself through property and sales taxes. Effective property tax rates average around 1.6% of home value — among the top few states — so a $400,000 house can cost more in annual property tax than a mid-five-figure salary would have paid in California income tax. Sales tax is 6.25% at the state level, and with local additions it hits the 8.25% cap in most metro areas. Renters and high earners tend to come out well ahead in Texas; a homeowner with a modest income and an expensive house may not. A paycheck calculator shows the income-tax side of that trade precisely — the rest depends on your housing.
Limits
This estimate covers federal income tax and FICA only, using 2026 IRS figures. It excludes pre-tax deductions (401(k), HSA, health premiums), tax credits, and W-4 withholding fine-tuning — so your actual check may differ even though the annual tax math is right. Property and sales taxes are context, not part of the calculation. To check whether your current withholding will produce a refund next spring, use the tax refund calculator, or explore the flexible paycheck calculator and Florida paycheck calculator for other no-income-tax scenarios. All our calculators show their formulas and official sources.