Annual Income Calculator

What this calculator does

An hourly wage tells you what an hour is worth, but it does not tell you what a year is worth, and the year is usually the number you actually plan your life around. This calculator bridges that gap. You give it your hourly wage and how much you work, and it turns that into your annual income, both the gross figure you earn and an estimate of what you take home after tax.

The simple arithmetic behind it

There is no mystery to the gross figure. Your annual income is simply your hours per week, times the weeks you work in a year, times your hourly wage. Work 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, and every hour is one of 2,080 hours in your working year.

Two of those inputs are worth a second thought. The weeks per year default to 52, which assumes you are paid for every week including your time off. If you take unpaid leave, trimming that number gives a truer picture. And the hours per week should reflect what you actually work, not just a nominal figure, since a few hours either way adds up across a whole year.

A worked example

Say you earn 25 an hour, work 40 hours a week for 52 weeks, and you reckon tax takes about 12%.

Your gross annual income comes to $52,000. Apply the 12% and your net hourly wage drops to $22, which over the same hours and weeks leaves a net annual income of $45,760. So the same job is a 52,000 job before tax and a 45,760 one after, and the 6,240 difference is the slice that never reaches your account. Seeing both numbers side by side is the point, because you spend the take-home figure, not the headline one.

Gross versus take-home

The tax here works as a single flat percentage, which makes it a clean, quick estimate rather than an exact payslip. Real take-home pay is messier than one percentage, because income tax usually rises in brackets as you earn more, and separate payroll taxes for things like Social Security and Medicare come out too, along with any pension or benefit deductions.

So the honest way to use the tax field is to enter your effective rate, the overall share of your pay that actually disappears to deductions, rather than a single headline tax band. That gets you much closer to reality. For a fuller breakdown of what lands in your pocket, our net income calculator goes deeper, and if you want to move between hourly and salary figures, the salary to hourly calculator handles that.

How to use it

• Working hours per week. The hours you actually work in a typical week.
• Working weeks per year. How many weeks a year you are paid for, 52 if that includes your time off, fewer if some leave is unpaid.
• Hourly wage. What you earn per hour.
• Tax. Your effective tax rate as a percentage, meaning the overall share of pay lost to deductions, for the take-home estimate.

Press Calculate for your gross annual income, net hourly wage, and net annual income. Press Reset to return to the defaults.

Questions people ask

How do I convert an hourly wage to annual income?

Multiply your hourly wage by the hours you work each week and then by the weeks you work in a year. At 25 an hour, 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, that is 52,000 gross a year.

Is this my gross pay or my take-home pay?

Both. The calculator shows the gross annual income you earn and, using the tax rate you enter, an estimate of your net take-home. Because real deductions are more complex than one flat rate, treat the net figure as an estimate and enter your effective rate for accuracy.

What if I take unpaid time off?

Lower the working weeks per year to match the weeks you are actually paid for. The default of 52 assumes you are paid across the whole year, so unpaid leave means fewer paid weeks and a lower annual figure.

References

Wage and hours standards, including minimum wage and the definition of the workweek, follow the U.S. Department of Labor. The point that take-home pay depends on withholding and deductions beyond a single flat rate follows the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

1. U.S. Department of Labor, Wage and Hour Division. Wages and the Fair Labor Standards Act. https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/flsa
2. Internal Revenue Service. Tax Withholding Estimator. irs.gov