Tennessee Paycheck Calculator
United States Uses United States federal and state tax and payroll rules. Updated
TN paycheck and salary calculator for 2026: federal withholding, FICA and deductions, no Tennessee income tax on wages, and the case of working elsewhere.
Educational estimate only. Not tax, legal, payroll, accounting, insurance, or financial advice. Consult a qualified authority before acting on a result.
Results
How to read this: the verdict describes how much room your numbers leave, not a decision or an offer. Change any input to see how much the result moves.
Paycheck guides
These guides explain the payroll concepts behind the calculator and link back to the specific paycheck tools for testing scenarios.
- How to calculate take-home pay
- Gross pay vs net pay
- How federal withholding works
- Salary vs hourly paycheck
- Bonus paycheck tax explained
For all guide topics, open Guides. For source and estimate boundaries, read Calculation Methodology and Sources and Assumptions.
When this calculator fits
Use this page as a Tennessee salary calculator or for hourly pay, including the common border case: Tennessee adjoins eight states that all tax wages, and a Tennessee address alone does not make a paycheck state-tax-free. State withholding follows the work state you select, so a TN paycheck earned across the line still shows the right state tax.
How to use this Tennessee paycheck calculator
Use this Tennessee paycheck calculator for a U.S. paycheck estimate with federal withholding, FICA, deductions, and no broad state wage income tax.
It also addresses related questions around Tennessee paycheck calculator, paycheck calculator Tennessee, TN paycheck calculator, Tennessee take home pay calculator, and paycheck calculator for Tennessee intent. The terms are grouped by the job a visitor is trying to complete, so the page stays readable instead of repeating the same phrase in different forms.
What matters for Tennessee paychecks
Tennessee does not levy a broad wage income tax, so the visible difference between gross and net pay on a Tennessee paycheck comes almost entirely from federal withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and whatever deductions the employer applies.
The result should be read as a paycheck estimate for Tennessee, not a payroll instruction. Confirm unusual cases, local tax rules, employer setup, and official withholding treatment with payroll or a qualified authority.
For hourly, salary, take-home, W-4, bonus and paystub questions, start from the U.S. paycheck calculator, which lists each page; all of them apply the same federal calculation this page does.
How other states are handled
| State handling | Paycheck page |
|---|---|
| No state wage income tax, so the estimate is federal withholding and FICA | Texas, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming |
| No state income tax, but a state employee premium is still withheld | Alaska, Washington |
| State withholding modeled automatically from official guidance | California, North Carolina, Indiana, Georgia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Massachusetts |
| Partial coverage, with manual state withholding kept visible | New Jersey |
How the paycheck estimate is worked out
How Tennessee withholding is worked out
Tennessee touches eight states, and every one of them taxes wages: Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Missouri. That geography matters more here than in most states without a wage income tax, because a Tennessee address does not by itself produce a state-tax-free paycheck. This calculator keys state withholding to the work state, so a Tennessee resident whose job sits across a line gets that state's treatment, and the residency check flags the mismatch.
When Tennessee is both the work state and the residence state, the engine returns zero state income tax and zero employee payroll contribution, with no rule source attached, because there is no Tennessee wage rule to cite. What remains is federal withholding, Social Security, Medicare, and employer deductions. On a paystub the state block is usually printed and blank, which is not the same as missing: payroll still reports Tennessee as the work jurisdiction even when the amount is zero.
Tennessee did once levy a tax on certain interest and dividend income, and that tax is frequently misremembered as an income tax on earnings. It never applied to wages, and it no longer exists. Neither the old rule nor its removal changes anything about a paycheck, which is worth knowing if you are comparing an older Tennessee paystub against a current one and expecting a difference that was never on the check to begin with.
State-level paycheck lines in Tennessee
| Line | How it is treated for 2026 |
|---|---|
| Tennessee income tax withheld | No line. Tennessee sits in the verified no-broad-wage-income-tax group, so the engine returns 0.00 with no rule source. |
| W-2 state boxes | Present but empty for Tennessee-sourced wages. An empty state box is the expected outcome, not a payroll mistake. |
| Work in a bordering state | All eight neighboring states tax wages. The engine applies the selected work state's rules, not Tennessee's. |
| Employee payroll contribution | Not modeled. Tennessee is not in the Alaska and Washington group with an employee-side state premium. |
| Former interest and dividend tax | Applied to investment income, never to wages, and no longer exists. It has no paycheck effect either way. |
A worked Tennessee paycheck
Take a single filer in Tennessee on $47,380 a year, paid every two weeks with no pre-tax deductions. $47,380 is the state's median annual wage across all occupations, so this sits near the middle of the Tennessee labor market rather than being a round number chosen to look tidy. The figures below are produced by running this page's own calculator, so they are what you would get by entering the same details in the form above.
Tennessee: $47,380 a year, paid biweekly
| Line | Amount per paycheck |
|---|---|
| Gross paycheck | $1,822.31 |
| Federal income tax | -$134.83 |
| Social Security | -$112.98 |
| Medicare | -$26.42 |
| State income tax | $0.00 |
| Estimated take-home pay | $1,548.08 |
That is $1,548.08 every two weeks, about $3,354.17 a month and $40,250.08 over a year, an effective paycheck tax rate of 15.05%. Median wage figures come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 state estimates, for all occupations.
Where these figures come from
Tennessee has no modeled state component, so the result carries no state rule source; the federal lines cite IRS Publication 15-T for 2026 withholding and IRS Publication 15 (2026) for Social Security and Medicare.
Why location coverage is labeled
No Tennessee local wage tax is modeled, and the local engine has no Tennessee entry to activate. The local complication a Tennessee worker is most likely to meet belongs to a neighbor rather than to Tennessee: some Kentucky localities levy occupational license taxes on wages earned within them, so a Tennessee resident commuting north can end up with both a state line and a local line on the stub. The calculator does not model those automatically. Use the local withholding override with the amount your paystub actually shows, and treat the state selection as the work location rather than the home address.
Coverage stays labeled in the result either way. Where a rule is not verified it is named as unsupported rather than guessed, and a manual override field is available when you know the amount from payroll guidance or an official source.
What this page assumes
The calculator converts salary or hourly earnings into one gross paycheck, subtracts pre-tax deductions, annualizes federal taxable wages for a W-4-style withholding estimate, applies FICA, then subtracts any entered state/local withholding and post-tax deductions.
Federal and FICA calculations run locally from versioned 2026 rule data. State and local withholding are coverage-labeled: unsupported jurisdictions are not silently guessed, and you can enter known withholding amounts when you have them. This is not tax, legal, payroll, or financial advice.
Common paycheck calculator mistakes
- Assuming every Tennessee payroll line is automatic. Read the result coverage notes and use manual override fields for items outside verified support.
- Reading "no state income tax" as "no state line ever". Tennessee withholds nothing from wages, and that is the whole of it here. An employer can still deduct for benefits, garnishments or retirement, and work performed in another state is generally withheld under that state's rules rather than Tennessee's.
What this calculator leaves out: This calculator is an educational estimate. It does not provide tax, legal, payroll, accounting, insurance, or financial advice; it does not file forms; it does not know every employer-specific benefit rule, local tax, wage-base history, payroll correction, reimbursement, or year-to-date adjustment; and unsupported state or local rules are not silently guessed.
Frequently asked questions
Does Tennessee tax wages?
Tennessee does not have a broad state wage income tax. Federal withholding, Social Security, and Medicare still come out of every paycheck, so take-home pay is well below gross pay even without a state wage tax.
I live in Tennessee but work in another state. Will state tax still be withheld?
Usually yes. Withholding generally follows where the work is performed, and all eight states bordering Tennessee tax wages. Select the actual work state in the calculator so the correct coverage is applied; the tool then returns a manual-review status for the work-and-residence mismatch rather than applying reciprocity or credit rules on its own.
Did Tennessee used to have an income tax?
Tennessee taxed certain interest and dividend income under a separate tax, which is why the question comes up so often. It applied to investment income rather than earnings, so it never reached a paycheck, and it no longer exists. For wages, the answer has been the same throughout: no broad Tennessee wage income tax is withheld.
Why is the state box on my Tennessee W-2 blank?
Because there is no Tennessee wage income tax to report there. Payroll systems normally still print the state and the state wages, then leave the state income tax figure empty or at zero. If you see an amount in that box for Tennessee-sourced wages, ask payroll, because it usually points to a work-state setup issue rather than a Tennessee tax.
Sources
The rules this estimate applies, each linked to the official publication it was taken from. This state adds no wage-tax rule of its own, so the federal rules are the whole list.
- IRS Publication 15-T (2026), Worksheet 1A and 2026 Percentage Method Tables for Automated Payroll Systems — reviewed 13 August 2026, in force 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026.
- IRS Publication 15 (2026), Social Security and Medicare tax rates — reviewed 13 August 2026, in force 1 January 2026 to 31 December 2026.
This page is an educational estimate, not personal financial or tax advice. Withholding on a real paycheck depends on the W-4 on file and on payroll items this calculator does not see.