If you have ever wondered what tax bracket you fall in, the answer is probably simpler than you expect, and very likely lower than you fear. Most people estimate their bracket based on their salary, which turns out to be the single most common mistake, because your bracket is not determined by what you earn. It is determined by your taxable income, which is usually a fair bit smaller than your paycheck suggests.
Here is how to determine your 2026 tax bracket using the current federal tax rates and a couple of straightforward examples.
What Is an Income Tax Bracket?
An income tax bracket is a range of income taxed at a specific rate, and the federal system uses seven of them, running from 10% up to 37%.
The detail that trips people up is that these brackets are progressive, meaning your income is taxed in layers rather than all at a single rate. Falling into the 22% bracket does not mean you pay 22% on everything you make. You pay 22% only on the portion of income that actually lands inside that bracket, and you pay the lower rates on everything beneath it. That distinction matters more than almost anything else here, so it is worth holding onto.
What Determines Your Tax Bracket
Two things decide where you land:
- your taxable income; and
- your filing status.
Taxable income is not your salary. It is what remains after you subtract certain amounts from your gross income, and for most people, the largest subtraction is the standard deduction.
To find out your bracket, start with your gross income, subtract any adjustments you qualify for, then subtract the standard deduction or your itemized deductions, whichever is larger. What remains is your taxable income, and that number, matched against the table for your filing status, is what determines your tax bracket.
This is also why two people earning the identical salary can sit in different brackets, since filing status changes both the bracket thresholds and the size of the standard deduction.
The 2026 Standard Deduction
The standard deduction is the most important number for most filers, because it directly lowers the income on which your bracket is based. For the 2026 tax year, the amounts are $16,100 for single filers, $32,200 for married couples filing jointly, $24,150 for head of household, and $16,100 for married filing separately.
So a single filer earning $60,000 is not taxed on the full $60,000. After subtracting the $16,100 standard deduction, only $43,900 is taxable, which keeps most of that income in the 12% bracket.
The 2026 Federal Tax Brackets
These are the brackets for the 2026 tax year, covering income earned in 2026 and generally filed in early 2027. The seven rates were made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which means the threatened jump back to a 39.6% top rate is now off the table. Match your taxable income, not your salary, to the row for your filing status.
Single filers
| Rate | Taxable income |
|---|---|
| 10% | $0 to $12,400 |
| 12% | $12,401 to $50,400 |
| 22% | $50,401 to $105,700 |
| 24% | $105,701 to $201,775 |
| 32% | $201,776 to $256,225 |
| 35% | $256,226 to $640,600 |
| 37% | $640,601 and up |
Married filing jointly or qualifying surviving spouse
| Rate | Taxable income |
|---|---|
| 10% | $0 to $24,800 |
| 12% | $24,801 to $100,800 |
| 22% | $100,801 to $211,400 |
| 24% | $211,401 to $403,550 |
| 32% | $403,551 to $512,450 |
| 35% | $512,451 to $768,700 |
| 37% | $768,701 and up |
Head of household
| Rate | Taxable income |
|---|---|
| 10% | $0 to $17,700 |
| 12% | $17,701 to $67,450 |
| 22% | $67,451 to $105,700 |
| 24% | $105,701 to $201,750 |
| 32% | $201,751 to $256,200 |
| 35% | $256,201 to $640,600 |
| 37% | $640,601 and up |
Married filing separately
| Rate | Taxable income |
|---|---|
| 10% | $0 to $12,400 |
| 12% | $12,401 to $50,400 |
| 22% | $50,401 to $105,700 |
| 24% | $105,701 to $201,775 |
| 32% | $201,776 to $256,225 |
| 35% | $256,226 to $384,350 |
| 37% | $384,351 and up |
How to Find Your Bracket: A Worked Example
Suppose you are a single filer earning $100,000. This is one of the most searched bracket questions, so it makes a clean illustration of how the math actually works.
First, subtract the standard deduction. Taking $16,100 from $100,000 leaves $83,900 in taxable income, which falls in the 22% bracket. But you do not pay 22% on all of it, because your income gets sliced across three brackets:
| Income slice | Rate | Tax on slice |
|---|---|---|
| First $12,400 | 10% | $1,240 |
| $12,400 to $50,400 | 12% | $4,560 |
| $50,400 to $83,900 | 22% | $7,370 |
| Total | ~$13,170 |
So even though this filer is technically “in the 22% bracket,” they pay about $13,170 on $100,000 of income. That is the practical difference between your marginal rate and your effective rate.
Marginal Rate vs. Effective Rate
Your marginal rate is the rate applied to your last dollar of taxable income, which for the filer above is 22%.
Your effective rate is what you actually pay across all your income, expressed as an average, and for that same filer, it works out to about 15.7% of taxable income, well below the 22% bracket they technically occupy.
This gap is the reason your top bracket is never your real tax rate. When someone says they are “in the 24% bracket,” their effective rate is almost always meaningfully lower. The bracket tells you the rate on your next dollar, while the effective rate tells you the actual bite taken from the whole.
What Pushes You Into a Higher Tax Bracket?
Only taxable income pushes you upward, and only the amount above a threshold gets taxed at the higher rate. A raise that nudges you into the next bracket does not reduce your take-home pay, because just the dollars above the line are taxed more, while everything below stays exactly where it was.
The things that raise taxable income include a higher salary, a bonus, freelance or side income, investment gains, and withdrawals from a traditional retirement account. The things that lower it include pretax retirement contributions and deductions. This is also why a refund or a balance due does not reveal your bracket, since both depend on withholding and credits, which are separate from where your income lands.
One quick clarification on credits. Deductions lower the income your bracket is based on, but credits work differently, cutting your tax bill directly after the tax has been calculated. The two are easy to confuse, yet do very different jobs.
One More Thing: State Taxes Are Separate
Everything above is federal. Your state may use its own brackets, a single flat rate, or no income tax at all, so your total rate can differ from the federal picture depending on where you live.
The Bottom Line
To figure out what tax bracket you fall in, start with your taxable income rather than your salary. Subtract the standard deduction from your gross income, identify your filing status, and match the result to the 2026 table.
Then remember that the bracket you land in reflects only the rate on your top dollars, while your effective rate, the one that captures what you genuinely pay, is almost always lower. For most people, that turns out to be good news.
