Your turn
Each lab is one step from the video. Drag, slide and switch, and watch the tax change.
Each lab isolates one idea. Figures are the IRS tax year 2026 brackets for federal income tax only, standard deduction, no credits.
Slide the sliders and watch the water.
Drag the water level. Which buckets pay tax, and how much does each one pay?
Each rate applies only to the taxable income inside its own bracket. Watch the tax per bucket as you drag.
Pour in more water. Which bucket fills first?
Change Maya's yearly pay. How much can she earn before any tax is due?
The $16,100 standard deduction (single, 2026) acts as a 0% bucket under the brackets. Find where tax starts.
The bottom bucket has no tax. Can you keep all the water in it?
Slide the pay up and down. Can the effective rate ever catch the marginal rate?
The marginal rate jumps at each threshold; the effective rate (total tax ÷ income) climbs smoothly and always trails it.
Switch Maya's $2,000 raise on and off. Does her take-home pay ever go down?
$66,000 → $68,000 crosses into the 22% bracket. Only the hatched $1,500 pays 22%.
Tap the button. Does Maya's piggy bank get bigger or smaller?
Pick any income, then switch between single and married. What changes?
Married-filing-jointly thresholds are double the single ones, except where 37% starts.
Federal income tax only, tax year 2026, standard deduction, no credits. Not tax advice.
When grown-ups earn money, they give a part of it to the government. That part is called tax.
Think of a stack of buckets. The money is like water. It fills the bottom bucket first. When a bucket is full, the water spills into the next one up.
The very bottom bucket is special. The money in it has no tax at all!
Each bucket above takes a part of its water for tax. Higher buckets take a bigger part. But a bucket only takes from the water inside it.
Maya's friend said more money means less for Maya. That's not true! Only the new water in the higher bucket pays the bigger part. The buckets below stay the same. So Maya keeps more money than before.
The US federal income tax splits your taxable income into layers called tax brackets, and each layer is taxed at its own rate. When your income reaches a higher bracket, you pay the higher rate only on the part of your income inside that bracket, not on everything you earn.1
A good way to picture it is a stack of buckets. Your income is water poured into the bottom bucket. It only spills into the next bucket when the one below is full, and each bucket has its own tax rate.
This page explains how the system works. It is not tax advice: your own tax depends on things we leave out, such as credits, other deductions, state taxes and payroll taxes.
A tax bracket is a range of taxable income that is taxed at one rate. The federal income tax has seven rates: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%.12 The dollar ranges depend on your filing status (single, married filing jointly, and so on) and change every year.
When someone says “I'm in the 22% bracket,” they mean their last dollars of taxable income land in the 22% range. Their first dollars are still taxed at 10% and 12%.
These are the most recent brackets the IRS has published, for tax year 2026 (money earned in 2026, on returns filed in 2027). They apply to taxable income, after deductions.2
| Rate | Single: taxable income | Married filing jointly: taxable income |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | $0 to $12,400 | $0 to $24,800 |
| 12% | over $12,400 to $50,400 | over $24,800 to $100,800 |
| 22% | over $50,400 to $105,700 | over $100,800 to $211,400 |
| 24% | over $105,700 to $201,775 | over $211,400 to $403,550 |
| 32% | over $201,775 to $256,225 | over $403,550 to $512,450 |
| 35% | over $256,225 to $640,600 | over $512,450 to $768,700 |
| 37% | over $640,600 | over $768,700 |
Notice that almost every married threshold is exactly double the single one. Only the start of the top 37% bracket is less than double.2 Heads of household and married people filing separately have their own tables on IRS.gov.1
Brackets don't start at your first dollar of pay. First you subtract deductions. Most people take the standard deduction, a fixed amount that reduces the income you're taxed on.3 For tax year 2026 it is:2
So you can think of it as a bucket underneath all the others, taxed at 0%. The amount can be higher if you're 65 or older or blind, and lower if someone else can claim you as a dependent. You can't take it if you itemize your deductions instead.3
Take Maya, a single filer, in her first job paying $30,000 in 2026:
tax = Σ (money in each bucket × that bucket's rate)
Maya has two tax rates, and they mean different things:
| Marginal rate | Effective rate | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The rate on your next dollar: your top bracket | Total tax ÷ total income |
| Maya at $30,000 | 12% | $1,420 ÷ $30,000 ≈ 4.7% |
| Useful for | “How much of a raise or bonus do I keep?” | “What share of my income goes to federal income tax?” |
Your “tax bracket” is your marginal rate. Your effective rate can never be higher than it, because the cheaper buckets always fill first.
It might, and that's fine. Say Maya now earns $66,000 and is offered $2,000 more:
| $66,000 pay | $68,000 pay | |
|---|---|---|
| Taxable income (after $16,100) | $49,900 | $51,900 |
| Top bracket (marginal rate) | 12% | 22% |
| Federal income tax | $5,740 | $6,130 |
| Effective rate | 8.7% | 9.0% |
| Take-home after federal income tax | $60,260 | $61,870 |
The raise moves her into the 22% bracket, but only the $1,500 above $50,400 of taxable income is taxed at 22%. The other $500 of the raise fills the rest of the 12% bucket. Her tax goes up by $390 and she keeps $1,610 of the $2,000.1
If the myth were true, and 22% applied to all her taxable income, she would owe $11,418. The real figure is $6,130.
One honest footnote: some tax credits and benefits shrink as income rises, which can take a bite out of a raise for some people. That's a separate rule, not the brackets.
For a single filer in 2026 who takes the standard deduction, here is how $100,000 of pay fills the buckets:
| Bucket | Money in it | Tax |
|---|---|---|
| Standard deduction (0%) | $16,100 | $0 |
| 10% | $12,400 | $1,240 |
| 12% | $38,000 | $4,560 |
| 22% | $33,500 | $7,370 |
| Total | $100,000 | $13,170 |
So this person is “in the 22% bracket,” but their effective federal income tax rate is about 13%, because most of their income sits in the cheaper buckets below. Their next $1,000 of pay would add $220 of tax, which is why the marginal rate is the one to think about for a bonus or overtime.2
A progressive tax takes a larger percentage of income from people with higher incomes than from people with lower incomes.4 The federal income tax does this with rising brackets: each extra dollar may be taxed at a higher rate, but the dollars below it keep their lower rates.
Each year the IRS adjusts the bracket thresholds and the standard deduction for inflation, so the buckets get a little wider as prices rise.23 For a single filer, the 10% bracket ended at $11,925 in 2025 and ends at $12,400 in 2026; the standard deduction rose from $15,750 to $16,100.12
Think of a stack of buckets. Your taxable income fills the bottom bucket first, then spills into the next. Each bucket has its own rate, and that rate applies only to the money inside that bucket, not to all your income.
It means your last dollars of taxable income fall in the bucket taxed at 22%. Only the money inside that bucket pays 22%. The dollars below it are still taxed at 10% and 12%, so your overall (effective) rate is much lower than 22%.
For tax year 2026, a single filer earning $100,000 who takes the $16,100 standard deduction has $83,900 of taxable income, which reaches the 22% bracket. Their federal income tax is about $13,170, an effective rate of about 13%.
A raise can move your top dollars into a higher bracket, but only those extra dollars pay the higher rate. The bracket system by itself never makes you take home less because you earned more.
On taxable income: your income minus deductions such as the standard deduction ($16,100 for a single filer in 2026). So the brackets start after the tax-free standard deduction has been taken off.
Your marginal rate is the rate on your next dollar, the rate of your top bracket. Your effective rate is your total tax divided by your income. Because the lower buckets are taxed at lower rates, your effective rate is always lower than or equal to your marginal rate.
Yes. The IRS adjusts the bracket thresholds and the standard deduction every year for inflation. For example, the single 10% bracket went up to $11,925 for 2025 and up to $12,400 for 2026.
Figures for tax year 2026, single filer unless stated. Worked examples use the standard deduction only and ignore credits, state and payroll taxes.