What Is FICA? Social Security and Medicare Tax Explained

FICA is 7.65% of your pay, taken straight from your paycheck for Social Security (6.2%) and Medicare (1.45%), on top of federal income tax. Your employer pays a matching 7.65% that never appears on your pay stub, so the programs actually receive 15.3% of your wages combined, split evenly between you and your employer.

This guide breaks down exactly where that 7.65% goes, what happens once you earn more than the Social Security wage base, and the one real situation where some of it comes back.

Disclosure: we make Salary Left, the free expense tracker linked below, and the salary calculator behind these figures.

Where the 7.65% goes

The Social Security portion stops once your wages for the year pass $184,500; every dollar after that is free of the 6.2%. Medicare never stops. On top of that, an Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9% applies to wages above $200,000 for a single filer ($250,000 married filing jointly), and unlike the regular 1.45%, your employer doesn't match this extra 0.9%.

A real example

On a $75,000 salary, FICA comes to $5,738 for the year: $4,650 for Social Security and $1,088 for Medicare. That's separate from, and in addition to, federal income tax.

What happens above the Social Security cap

Because Social Security stops at the wage base but Medicare doesn't, FICA grows more slowly once you're past it, and then ticks back up once the Additional Medicare threshold kicks in:

Notice Social Security stays fixed at $11,439 past the cap, while Medicare keeps climbing with every added dollar.

FICA isn't federal income tax

They're calculated completely separately and both come out of the same paycheck. Federal income tax is based on your taxable income after the standard deduction and tax brackets; FICA is a flat percentage of wages with no deduction and (below the cap) no bracket. A raise moves your federal income tax by your marginal bracket; it moves your FICA by a flat 7.65%, until you cross the Social Security cap.

Can you get any of it back?

Not the way over-withheld income tax comes back as a refund, with one real exception. If you worked for two or more employers in the same year and your combined wages crossed the Social Security wage base, each employer withheld the 6.2% independently, with no way of knowing about your other job. Between them, you can end up with more Social Security tax withheld than the annual maximum, and the IRS lets you claim that excess as a credit on your federal tax return (see the Form 1040 instructions for "excess Social Security tax withheld"). It's one of the more overlooked refunds people miss when they've changed jobs mid-year.

If you're self-employed

FICA only applies to wages from an employer. If you're a 1099 contractor or sole proprietor, the same 15.3% exists as self-employment tax instead, covering both the employee and employer shares yourself, applied to 92.35% of net profit rather than gross wages, with half of it deductible from your income tax. Our self-employment tax guide works through the exact math and a live calculator with that mode built in.

Sources and limits

• FICA rates, the Social Security wage base and the Additional Medicare threshold: the Social Security Administration's 2026 fact sheet and IRS Topic 751, Social Security and Medicare Withholding Rates.
• Excess Social Security tax withheld with multiple employers: IRS Topic 608.

This is general information, not tax advice. It doesn't cover every FICA exemption (certain nonresident visa categories and some student employment, for example, have narrower rules); for your specific situation, check the IRS guidance above or a tax professional.