FICA tax calculator
On 60,000 of wages, a single filer owes 4,590 in FICA: 3,720 of Social Security at 6.2% and 870 of Medicare at 1.45%. Social Security stops at the 2026 wage base of 184,500. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Wages
- 60,000
- Filing status
- Single
- Tax year
- 2,026
- Social security wage base
- 184,500
- Social security taxable
- 60,000
- Social security tax
- 3,720
FICA is the United States payroll tax that funds Social Security and Medicare. People who search for a FICA tax calculator want the tax owed from gross wages, not a generic withholding percent and not a full Form 1040 estimate. This calculator applies the 2026 employee Social Security rate of 6.2 percent to wages up to the Social Security wage base of 184500 dollars, the 1.45 percent Medicare rate to every dollar of wages, and the 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax to wages above the filing-status threshold. Zero wages return zero tax.
What FICA tax is and how Social Security and Medicare wage caps apply
FICA, the Federal Insurance Contributions Act, is the United States payroll tax that splits into Social Security Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance and Medicare Hospital Insurance. The employee share that this calculator returns is not a single flat percent on every dollar. Social Security tax is 6.2 percent of wages, but only up to the annual Social Security wage base, which for tax year 2026 is 184500 dollars as published by the Social Security Administration.
Any wage dollars above that cap are exempt from Social Security tax, so the maximum employee Social Security tax in 2026 is 11439 dollars. Employers generally begin withholding Additional Medicare Tax once an individual employee's wages pass 200000 dollars, but the tax owed on the return follows the filing-status thresholds encoded here. Combined, those three pieces are the FICA tax owed from gross wages.
Zero wages produce zero tax. Negative wages are not a wage base and are rejected.
Where a FICA tax calculator earns its keep
Payroll and people-operations teams use a FICA tax calculator when an offer letter or a raise needs the employee Social Security and Medicare line without standing up a full payroll engine. Compensation analysts send annual gross wages, read tax as the employee FICA owed, and layer federal income tax, state tax, and benefits in their own workbook.
Personal-finance apps that already store W-2 wages can show a FICA breakdown: Social Security tax that stops at the wage cap, Medicare tax that does not, and Additional Medicare Tax once wages clear the filing-status threshold. High earners checking whether they have hit the 2026 Social Security wage base of 184500 dollars can send that amount and confirm the maximum Social Security tax of 11439 dollars, then send a larger wage and confirm that only Medicare and Additional Medicare keep growing.
Exam-prep and consumer-math classrooms use the same contract so a student who applies 7.65 percent to wages above the cap is marked wrong, because Social Security is capped and Additional Medicare is not part of the 7.65 percent combined rate. This landing targets people searching for a FICA tax calculator, Social Security and Medicare tax from wages, or OASDI plus Hospital Insurance owed.
It is not a take-home-pay estimator with caller-supplied percents, not a California income-tax bracket tool, and not a self-employment SECA calculator at the doubled 12.4 and 2.9 percent rates. Prefer this capability when you already have United States gross wages and want 2026 employee FICA.
What you can do with it
Offer letters and payroll estimates
Compensation teams send annual gross wages to display employee Social Security, Medicare, and total FICA owed before layering income tax and benefits.
High-earner Social Security wage-base check
Confirm the 2026 Social Security cap at 184500 dollars, the 11439 dollar maximum OASDI tax, and Medicare that continues on wages above the cap.
Additional Medicare by filing status
Compare the 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax on the same wage under single, married filing jointly, and married filing separately thresholds.
FAQ
How is FICA tax calculated from gross wages?
Employee FICA for 2026 is 6.2 percent Social Security tax on wages up to 184500 dollars, plus 1.45 percent Medicare tax on all wages, plus 0.9 percent Additional Medicare Tax on wages above the filing-status threshold.
What is the 2026 Social Security wage base?
The Social Security Administration set the 2026 contribution and benefit base at 184500 dollars. Wages above that cap are not subject to the 6.2 percent employee Social Security tax. Medicare has no wage cap.
What happens if wages are negative?
FICA tax is computed from gross wages, so a negative amount is rejected and is not billed.
Does Medicare tax have a wage cap?
No. Regular Medicare tax of 1.45 percent applies to all wages. Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9 percent applies only to wages above 200000 dollars for single filers (250000 married filing jointly, 125000 married filing separately).
When does the Additional Medicare Tax start?
Above 200,000 of wages for single, head of household and qualifying surviving spouse filers, 250,000 for married filing jointly and 125,000 for married filing separately. It adds 0.9% on the wages above that line.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/fica-tax \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"wages":60000}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/fica-tax", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"wages": 60000
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/fica-tax",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"wages": 60000
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/fica-tax", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"wages":60000}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"wages":60000}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/fin/fica-tax", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"wages": 60000
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "fin.fica_tax",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Limits
max_abs | 1000000000000 |
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
Negative wages are rejected with invalid_input.
What FICA tax is and how Social Security and Medicare wage caps apply
Medicare tax is 1.45 percent of every dollar of wages: after 1993 there is no Medicare wage base, so high earners keep paying Hospital Insurance tax on the entire wage. On top of that, Additional Medicare Tax of 0.9 percent applies to wages above a threshold that depends on filing status: 200000 dollars for single, head of household, and qualifying surviving spouse; 250000 dollars for married filing jointly; and 125000 dollars for married filing separately.
Input contract, response shape, and error behaviour
Common short codes such as mfj, mfs, hoh, and qss are accepted and normalized. Failed validation is never charged. Send a JSON body with gross wages in United States dollars. wages (aliases gross_wages, gross, amount) is the FICA wage figure for the year, typically Social Security and Medicare wages as they would appear on Form W-2 rather than a net paycheck. It may arrive as a JSON number or as a numeric string that matches a strict finite pattern without dollar signs or thousands separators. Absolute value must stay within one trillion so the product remains finite in IEEE double precision on the Worker and in the browser. A negative wage is rejected with invalid_input naming the field; zero is allowed and yields tax zero. filing_status (aliases status, filing) is optional and defaults to single. When present it must be one of five statuses: single, married_filing_jointly, married_filing_separately, head_of_household, or qualifying_surviving_spouse. An unrecognized status fails with invalid_input instead of silently using the single threshold. On success the response echoes wages rounded to cents and the canonical filing_status, reports tax_year 2026, reports the Social Security wage base of 184500, reports social_security_taxable as the wages actually subject to the 6.2 percent rate, and returns social_security_tax, medicare_tax, additional_medicare_threshold, additional_medicare_tax, and the primary field tax as the sum of the three FICA pieces rounded to two-decimal money. effective_rate_percent is tax divided by wages, or zero when wages are zero. formula restates the 2026 employee FICA identity. Pricing is a flat $0.002 per successful request with unit item.
Where a FICA tax calculator earns its keep
Households comparing married filing jointly against married filing separately can change filing_status on the same wage and see how the Additional Medicare threshold moves from 250000 to 125000 dollars. Failed tasks that return invalid_input do not consume prepaid balance, which keeps exploratory scripts cheap. Round-trip checks are easy: cap wages at 184500 for Social Security, apply 1.45 percent to the whole wage, apply 0.9 percent above the threshold, confirm tax within two-decimal rounding, then confirm that tax divided by wages matches effective_rate_percent at the published $0.002 automation rate.
Technical questions
What does the FICA tax calculator cost?
The browser tool is free. API requests use prepaid balance at $0.002 per successful call; invalid input is not billed.