Salary Calculator: Gross to Net, Income Tax and Take-Home Pay

A job offer says 200,000 and the bank account receives 174,000 at the end of the month. The difference gets a one-line explanation, "that is the tax", and the conversation usually ends there. In reality that line hides a progressive tax scale, standard deductions for children, a special order for bonuses and sick pay, and an annual recalculation based on what you actually earned during the year. Here is how the whole thing fits together, with real numbers.

One caveat before the numbers: every figure below reflects the rules in force in 2026. Tax legislation changes every year, thresholds and deduction limits are revised regularly, so for anything that matters, check the current version of the tax code and the payslips your payroll department produces.

What take-home pay is made of

Gross and net are two names for the same income. Gross is what the employer credited before withholding anything: salary, bonuses, allowances. Net is what actually landed in the account. The gap between them is not all income tax: some of it can go to other deductions if the employment contract mentions them, such as alimony or contributions under an agreement.

• gross, or credited pay: everything accrued before deductions;
• personal income tax: the main tax withheld from salary, with a base rate of 13 percent;
• deductions: amounts that shrink the taxable base and therefore the tax itself;
• net, or take-home pay: gross minus the tax withheld and any other deductions.

Two numbers are worth keeping apart: the tax for the whole year and the tax for a single month. They are almost never equal, and that mismatch is what makes people uneasy when a bonus arrives or a new rate kicks in halfway through the year.

How the tax is calculated: the rate depends on annual income

Russia has used a progressive personal income tax scale since 2025. Before that, a flat 13 percent applied to all earnings and the annual total only affected how the advance payments were timed. Now the rate depends on the amount earned over the year, and the higher rates mostly touch high salaries.

• 13 percent on the part of annual income up to 2.4 million roubles;
• 15 percent on the part between 2.4 and 5 million;
• 18 percent on the part between 5 and 20 million;
• 20 percent on the part between 20 and 50 million;
• 22 percent on the part above 50 million.

The phrase that matters here is "on the part". The higher rate does not apply to the whole income, only to the amount above the threshold. A salary of 3 million a year is not taxed at 18 percent across the board: the first 2.4 million goes at 13 percent and only the remaining 600 thousand at 18 percent. That keeps the transition between rates smooth rather than a cliff.

As for a tax-free allowance, it is worth being precise: salary has none in the sense of "below this amount there is no tax". Every rouble is taxable and deductions only reduce the base. What people usually call a tax-free threshold is the 2.4 million boundary, and above it the rate rises rather than the tax disappearing. A separate measure that does shift the base lower exists from 2026 for families with two or more children, and it is covered further down.

Deductions: what shrinks the taxable base

A deduction is not a discount on the salary. The deduction is subtracted from the income first, the smaller base is taxed at the rate, and only then does the difference appear in the payslip. That is why a deduction of 1,400 roubles at 13 percent is worth 182 roubles, not 1,400: the saving equals the deduction multiplied by the rate.

Standard deductions for children

This is the deduction most people meet first, because it is applied directly by the employer with no paperwork. As of 2026 the monthly amounts are 1,400 roubles for the first child, 2,800 for the second and 6,000 for the third and every child after that. A child who is disabled with group I or II, or disabled from birth, adds 12,000 roubles on top, which brings the first child to 13,400 roubles a month.

• the deduction applies to children under 18, and to full-time students, postgraduates and residents under 24;
• it keeps working while the cumulative main tax base for the year stays under 450,000 roubles;
• a single parent receives the deduction in double size;
• from 2026 only the main tax base counts towards that 450,000 limit, so dividends and deposit interest no longer use it up;
• the employer applies the deduction using the child records the tax authority holds, so a separate application is usually not needed.

Property and social deductions

Property deductions cover buying a home, paying mortgage interest and selling or buying a car. The basic spending limits are 2 million roubles for a home purchase and 3 million roubles for mortgage interest. At 13 percent that means refunds of up to 260,000 and 390,000 roubles. Families with children get an increased limit per child on a home purchase, and those amounts are revised, so the current wording of the tax code is the place to check.

The progressive scale also changed the size of the refund: for income taxed at 15 percent, the maximum refund on a home purchase is calculated at 15 percent of 2 million, which is 300,000 roubles rather than 260,000. Social deductions cover medical, education, sport and insurance expenses, each with its own annual cap, and the list of eligible sport expenses was widened in 2026.

One difference is worth remembering: property and social deductions are usually claimed through a tax return or applied at work on request, and they are refunded after the tax has already been paid, often in the following year. The standard deduction for children is the only one that really reduces the figure in the payslip straight away.

A step-by-step example: a salary of 150,000

Take a monthly salary of 150,000 roubles and an employee with two children. Assume the deductions apply, there are no other sources of income, the year is not over yet and the whole annual income fits inside the first 2.4 million.

1. Monthly salary (gross)               150,000

2. Standard deductions for children:
     first child                           1,400
     second child                          2,800
     total per month                       4,200

3. Taxable base: 150,000 - 4,200       145,800

4. Tax at 13 %: 145,800 * 0.13          18,954

5. Take-home pay: 150,000 - 18,954    131,046

Recalculated for the year:
   gross for the year: 150,000 * 12   1,800,000
   base for the year:                1,749,600
   tax for the year: * 0.13           227,448
   take-home for the year:            1,572,552
   monthly average:                    131,046

   The 2,400,000 threshold is not crossed, so 13 % all year

What stands out here. The child deductions did their job: without them the tax would be 19,500 a month instead of 18,954, which is 546 roubles more in the pocket. Over a year that is 6,552 roubles. Notice also that the annual tax divides by 12 exactly, because the rate is unchanged all year and the deductions are constant.

Average and effective tax rate

Once the rate changes, the tax stops being even. Here is the same exercise with a salary of 300,000 and no deductions.

Annual gross: 300,000 * 12           3,600,000

First part: 2,400,000 * 13 %           312,000
Second part: 1,200,000 * 15 %          180,000
                                           -------
Tax for the year                         492,000

Take-home for the year                 3,108,000
Monthly average                          259,000

Effective rate: 492,000 / 3,600,000 = 13.67 %
At a flat 13 % it would be 468,000, a difference of 24,000

The average monthly tax is simple: divide the annual tax by 12, and you get 41,000 a month. The effective rate is calculated against gross and shows how much tax was paid on every rouble earned, in this case 13.67 percent. That is the number to quote when someone asks how much of the salary goes to tax. The gap against a flat 13 percent is visible too: 24,000 a year, which is two percent of the amount above the threshold.

With a salary like that, the 2.4 million mark is reached at the end of the eighth month. Until then the rate is 13 percent, and from the ninth month it rises to 45,000 roubles of tax a month instead of 39,000, which is exactly why the last months of the year can look different from the first ones. That is the scale working as designed, not a mistake in the calculation.

Bonuses, sick pay and other payments

The main rule is that almost every payment made to an employee joins the same base as the salary and is taxed on the same scale. What differs is how the amounts are taken into account.

• a bonus paid as part of the salary joins the same running total and can push the annual income into a higher rate;
• the tax code has a few narrow exemptions, for instance certain payments funded by trade union contributions or agreed in a collective agreement, but the default is that income is income;
• sickness benefit is taxed on the same progressive scale, taking the whole year of income into account rather than the benefit alone;
• the party that pays the benefit withholds the tax and reports it in the personal income tax calculation;
• deductions for children apply to the base built including the bonus, so add up the incomes for the month first and reduce the base afterwards.

The subject that frightens people most is the year-end recalculation. The final tax is computed for the whole year, not for individual months. The withholding agent deducts tax based on current data, and then the employee files a personal income tax return before 30 April of the following year, where the tax is recalculated against the actual income for the year. If too much was withheld, the difference comes back. If too little, it is collected.

Doing the maths in Excel

Everything above can be calculated in Excel without macros and without add-ins. Here are the formulas for the usual cases, written with semicolons for the Russian locale and with commas for the English one.

A1: monthly gross                    B1: 150000
A2: monthly deduction                 B2: 4200
A3: taxable base                      B3: =B1-B2
A4: tax at 13 %                       B4: =ROUND(B3*0.13;0)
A5: take-home pay                     B5: =B1-B4

Reverse calculation, net to gross:
B6: =ROUND(B5/(1-0.13);0)

Annual base and annual tax (monthly salary in A7):
B7: =B1*12
B8: =B1*12-B2*12
B9: =ROUND(B8*0.13;0)

Progressive scale for annual income in B10:
B11: =ROUND(MIN(B10;2400000)*0.13;0)
B12: =ROUND(MAX(MIN(B10;5000000)-2400000;0)*0.15;0)
B13: =ROUND(MAX(MIN(B10;20000000)-5000000;0)*0.18;0)
B14: =SUM(B11:B13)

Effective rate: =B14/B10, formatted as a percentage

Two practical notes. Round the tax to whole roubles, the way payroll does, otherwise small differences accumulate over a long year and stop matching the payslip. And keep the MIN and MAX in the progressive formula: they are what stops the income above a threshold from being taxed at the higher rate all the way down.

Plain calculators are useful next to the spreadsheet: the percentage calculator for checking a rate quickly and the compound interest calculator when you compare salary against savings at 13 percent a year. For payslips, invoices and payment documents, the amount in words tool writes the sum out in full, the same way it is used for an invoice on payment.

The family tax payment introduced in 2026

Since 2026 Russia has an annual family tax payment, popularly called a tax cashback. In essence it returns part of the personal income tax already paid to families with two or more children, and it is this measure that many people mean when they talk about a tax-free allowance, because in practice the first 6 percent of such a family income stays untouched.

Payment = income tax paid for the year - (taxable base * 6 %)

Example: annual income 1,000,000
   tax at 13 %                         130,000
   recalculated at 6 %                   60,000
   payment                               70,000

The conditions are strict, and it is better to know that in advance. A family must have at least two children under 18, or under 23 if the child studies full time and is not married. The applicant must be a Russian citizen, a tax resident and a payer of tax at 13 percent, the average per capita income of the family must not exceed one and a half times the working-age subsistence minimum in the region, there must be no alimony arrears, and property limits apply to the number of homes, cars and similar assets.

Applications are accepted from 1 June to 1 October of the year following the year the tax was paid, through the government services portal, the multifunctional centres or a social fund office. Either parent can claim the payment if they worked and paid tax. The exact property criteria and the list of counted incomes are set by the government, so check them in the current wording before applying.

Common questions

How much tax is taken from a salary of 100,000?

On 100,000 a month with no deductions the tax is 13,000 and 87,000 lands in the account. The annual income of 1,200,000 stays below the 2.4 million threshold, so the rate stays at 13 percent all year. Add a deduction for a child and the tax drops further, and the more children there are the bigger the drop.

How do I turn net back into gross?

Divide the take-home amount by 0.87 at a rate of 13 percent. From 87,000 that gives 100,000. The formula holds while the annual income stays under 2.4 million. Above that the rate changes and a single formula no longer works, so you have to calculate in parts.

Is it true that you do not have to pay tax on your salary?

There is no abolition of the personal income tax and no allowance in the sense of "nothing is taxed below this sum". The rate depends on annual income, deductions reduce the base, and for families with two or more children the family payment introduced in 2026 returns part of the tax already paid.

Why does the tax in my payslip change from month to month?

That is how the progressive scale works: the withholding agent accumulates income from the start of the year and applies the higher rate to the part above 2.4 million. One-off payments, bonuses and sick pay also change the picture for that month. At the end of the year everything is recalculated against the actual income.

Who pays my income tax, the employer or me?

Usually the employer, which acts as the withholding agent, takes the tax out of the payment and transfers it to the budget. The employee files the annual return personally and declares all income, including money earned from other employers. That return is what determines the final tax for the year, and whether the difference is refunded or collected.