When taxes are calculated, everyone's first bracket is taxed equally. Once an individual's yearly income surpasses the first bracket, any amount of income above the first bracket and below the next bracket is taxed at the next bracket's rate.
A deduction is something that reduces an individual's taxable income. Someone could make $40,000, and if they deducted $10,000, they would only get taxed on $30,000. Every year a Standard Deduction is established that applies for everyone by default. However, if someone could show they spent more on deductible expenses than the standard, they could use their own deductions instead.
Every year, US tax brackets are redefined by law. By looking at income and tax brackets per year, we can see how changes in tax policy affect incomes differently.
Please see the interactive examples below. You can show and hide sections of the page when you are done with them.
In addition to the charts below, you can view a 3D graph of taxes paid on a range of incomes over time at the link below:
For historical tax rates, please visit TaxFoundation.org
For more recent tax rates, please visit MoneyChimp.com
Here is how the taxes would be calculated for a specific income based on the selected Tax Year. The amount of tax is shown per bracket, and the effective tax rate for the income is shown below.
| Income Bracket | Amount Taxed in Bracket | Tax Rate | Tax Amount |
|---|---|---|---|
| ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(breakdown.bracket) }} | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(breakdown.max) }} | {{ formatNumberForDisplay(breakdown.taxRate) }}% | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(breakdown.taxAmount) }} |
| Income specified was | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(specificIncomeBreakdown.calculatedIncome) }} |
| Standard Deduction was | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(taxDeductionAmount) }} |
| Taxable Income was | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(specificIncomeBreakdown.taxableIncome) }} |
| The total amount of tax owed would be | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(specificIncomeBreakdown.totalAmount) }} |
| The effective tax rate would be | {{ formatDecimalAsPercent(specificIncomeBreakdown.effectiveTaxRate) }} |
| The net income after tax would be | ${{ formatNumberForDisplay(specificIncomeBreakdown.netIncome) }} |
This is what a range of incomes would look like for the year chosen in the drop down at the top of the page.
Performance Note: If your page stutters, it could help to decrease the number of steps so fewer points need to be rendered on some of the graphs below.
With some years worth of tax bracket definitions, we can look at how an amount would be taxed over the years. Here you can experiment to see how different incomes are affected by yearly changes.
This interactive 3D graph shows how effective tax rates change year over year across a range of incomes. You can adjust the income range and step count to explore different perspectives on how tax policy has evolved.
Note: This visualization requires additional loading time (~10 seconds) due to the computational complexity of rendering a 3D surface plot.