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What is meant by one being in a “tax bracket”?
Tax brackets refer to the range of taxable within which you fall. An income tax bracket usually refers to federal or state tax, not the combined rate. I have put here the tax brackets for 2016 for IRS and State of California.  https://www.irs.com/articles/2016-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions  https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2016-california-tax-rates-and-exemptions.shtml According to those, a taxable income of 100,000USD would fall in the 28% bracket for the IRS and 9.30% for State of California. The combined rate is therefore 37.3%. However, this does not mean you would pay 37,300USD. First of all, your applicable tax rate applies only for each dollar in your tax bracket (e.g. 28% * 8,849USD for IRS). Therefore, to calculate your combined taxes you would need to do:  Therefore, your effective tax rate would be much lower than the combined tax rate of 37.3%. Now do note that this is an example to illustrate tax brackets and is nowhere near the amount of taxes you would be required to pay because of various credits and deductions that you would be able to benefit from. Edit: As suggested in the comments, a note on marginal tax rate (referred to here as combined tax rate). This is the rate of taxes paid on an additional dollar of income. Here, every additional dollar of income would be taxed at 37.3%, leaving you with 62.7 cents.