Offer your insights or judgment on the input financial query or topic using your financial expertise. Reply as normal question answering

Tax brackets in the US
Yes, your tax bracket is 25%.  However, that doesn't mean that your take home pay will be 75% of your salary.  There is much more that goes into figuring out what your take home pay will be. First, you have payroll taxes.  This is often listed on your pay stub as "FICA."  The Social Security portion of this tax is 6.2% on the first $118,500 of your pay and the Medicare portion is another 1.45% on the first $200,000.  (Your employer also has to pay additional tax that does not appear on your stub.)  So 7.65% of your salary gets removed off the top. In addition to the federal income taxes that get withheld, you may also have state income taxes that get withheld.  The amount varies with each state. Also, the 25% tax bracket does not mean that your tax is 25% of your entire salary.  You step through the tax brackets as your income goes up.  So part of your salary is taxed at 10%, part at 15%, and the remainder is at 25%. The amount of federal income tax that is withheld from your paycheck is really a rough estimate of how much tax you actually owe.  There are lots of things that can reduce your tax liability (personal exemptions, deductions, credits) or increase your tax (investment income, penalties).  When you do your tax return, you calculate the actual tax that you owe, and you either get a refund if too much was taken out of your check, or you need to send more money in if too little was taken out.