The table, not a flat percent
Revenue Procedure 2025-32, section 4.01, sets the 2026 rate tables. For a single filer, taxable income not over $12,400.00 is taxed at 10 percent. The next band, over $12,400.00 but not over $50,400.00, is $1,240.00 plus 12 percent of the excess over $12,400.00. At exactly $50,400.00, that formula equals $5,800.00. The marginal rate on that income is 12 percent, because the income is still inside the "not over $50,400.00" band. The next dollar is over the boundary, so it is taxed at 22 percent. The effective rate on the $50,400.00 is the $5,800.00 of tax divided by $50,400.00, which is lower than 12 percent because the first $12,400.00 was taxed at 10 percent. People say "I am in the 22 percent bracket" as if every dollar were taxed at 22 percent. The effective rate is the correction.
The same procedure's section 4.14 sets the basic standard deduction: $16,100.00 for unmarried individuals, $32,200.00 for married filing jointly, $24,150.00 for heads of household, and $16,100.00 for married filing separately. This page does not subtract that deduction. It starts from taxable income, which is income after the deduction you are allowed. If you type wages, you will treat wages as if they were taxable income and the tax will be too high. The paycheck page does the subtraction. On $60,000.00 of wages, single, the taxable income is $43,900.00 and the tax is $5,020.00. The marginal rate is still 12 percent, and the next dollar is also 12 percent, because $43,900.00 is not sitting on a boundary. The effective rate on those wages, tax divided by $60,000.00, is lower than the effective rate on the taxable income.
Boundaries are where the next dollar matters
Inside a band, the rate on this income and the rate on the next dollar are the same. On a boundary, they differ. That is the whole content of the two labels. A traditional retirement deferral saves tax at the marginal rate, not at the effective rate, until the deferral is large enough to cross back into a lower bracket. The traditional-versus-Roth page asks you to type a marginal rate for that reason. It will not pull the rate from this page automatically, because your next dollar and this demonstration income are not the same number. Use this page to see the bracket, then type the rate you mean.
Married filing jointly has its own thresholds, starting with 10 percent not over $24,800.00. Head of household and married filing separately have theirs. The form's status control switches tables. It does not know whether you qualify for a status. Head of household is a legal status with rules this page does not recite. Choosing it in the menu is not a determination that you qualify. The tax is whatever the chosen table says about the income you typed.
What the ordinary table leaves out
Credits are not subtracted. The child tax credit, a saver's credit, and any other credit would reduce the tax and the effective rate. This page would have to invent eligibility to include them, so it does not. The additional standard deduction for age or blindness is in the same revenue procedure and is not applied, because the form does not ask age or blindness. Capital-gains rates are a different schedule. Long-term capital gain is not taxed entirely at these ordinary rates. If the income you type includes long-term gain, the ordinary table overstates the tax. Qualified dividends are in that same special world. The page is an ordinary-income explainer. It says so in the note above the form.
Withholding is also a different system. Publication 15-T for 2026 is the IRS method employers use with Form W-4. The paycheck estimate on this site is explicit that it is not that method. This bracket page is one step further from a pay stub: it does not annualize a period, does not compute FICA, and does not apply the wage base. Social Security and Medicare are not income tax. They do not appear in the marginal rate. If you want them, use the paycheck page and keep the two taxes separate in your head. Adding them into an "effective" income-tax rate would mix two statutes.
How a bracket story goes wrong
The common mistake is to multiply all taxable income by the marginal rate. At $50,400.00 of single taxable income, 12 percent of the whole amount is more than the table's $5,800.00, because the first band was 10 percent. The other common mistake is to fear the next bracket as if crossing it taxed every earlier dollar at the new rate. Crossing into 22 percent taxes the dollars above $50,400.00 at 22 percent. The dollars below stay where they were. The two rates on this page exist so that distinction is visible at the boundary, where it is easiest to miss.
Giuseppe Ilarda, the site owner, writes and checks the lookup. The numbers are the revenue procedure's, not a preparer's judgment about your return. The disclaimer says the site does not give tax advice. The editorial policy points at this procedure for the paycheck tool. Nothing here is a filing position. If a later law changes the 2026 tables, the procedure in the source list is the document that would have to change before these rates should.