Salary LeftGross Pay Calculator
Enter the take-home pay you want, and see the gross salary it takes to get there after federal, state, Social Security and Medicare tax. The reverse of a normal paycheck calculator.
Already know your salary?
Our salary calculator works the normal direction: enter gross pay and see what you'll actually take home.
Open the salary calculatorWhy this isn't simple division
You can't just divide a target take-home number by "roughly 75%" and get a reliable answer, because the share of pay that goes to tax isn't constant. Federal tax is charged in brackets that take a bigger slice as pay rises, Social Security tax stops once pay passes the annual wage base, and state tax rates and rules vary by state and by how much you earn. The real relationship between gross and net pay bends at several points, not a straight line.
This tool finds the answer by searching for it: it tries a gross salary, runs it through the same federal, state, Social Security and Medicare calculation as our salary calculator, checks how close the resulting take-home pay is to your target, and refines the guess until it matches to the cent.
When this is useful
- Negotiating a job offer or raise around a specific take-home number instead of a gross figure.
- Setting a freelance or contract rate when you know what you need to actually receive.
- Grossing up a bonus or relocation payment so a round, specific amount lands in someone's account after tax, the same calculation payroll and HR teams call a gross-up.
Frequently asked
What is a gross pay calculator?
A calculator that works backward from take-home pay to gross salary, the opposite direction of a normal paycheck calculator. You enter the amount you want to actually receive, and it finds the salary that would produce it after tax.
Why would I need to know my required gross salary?
It's useful when negotiating a job offer or raise around a specific take-home number, setting a freelance or contract rate, or figuring out what a bonus or relocation payment needs to be before tax so a set amount actually lands in your account.
How is this calculated?
There's no simple formula to invert, since tax brackets and the payroll tax cap mean take-home pay isn't a fixed percentage of salary. This tool searches for the gross salary that produces your target take-home pay using the same federal, state, Social Security and Medicare calculation as our salary calculator, refining the guess until it matches your target to the cent.
Is this the same as a gross-up calculation?
Yes, this is the same math payroll and HR teams call grossing up, used for things like a relocation payment or bonus where a specific net amount needs to land in someone's account after tax.
Is my data saved anywhere?
No. The calculation runs entirely in your browser and nothing you type is sent to a server or stored.